


The lone wolf -- The Wolf

by LyriaStark



Series: The dragon, The wolf, and the dragonwolves [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aegon is a wrag, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Escape, F/M, Hostage Situations, Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, Jon Snow is King in the North, Jon Snow is Not Called Aegon, this is long-running so it's not everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-01-25 22:44:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 46,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18584119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyriaStark/pseuds/LyriaStark
Summary: Lyria Stark,Robb Stark's sister,was sent to squire Jamie Lannister.Meanwhile,a Targaryen prince and a princess are planning to retake the Iron Throne.What could a young girl do in the game of Thrones?Everything.





	1. The letter

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone,this is my first fic and because I am not native English speaker,please forgive my spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes.Enjoy!

EDDARD

Eddard paced silently in his solar，there's a letter from King's landing on the table which is obviously wrinkled，for it had been read a lot of times.  
To Eddard Stark,lord of Winterfell,lord paramount：  
To promote the relationships between House Stark and House Lannister,now I,Robert Baratheon,inform you to sent one of your children to King's landing,he or she,will be Ser Jamie Lannister's squire and a ward to House Lannister.He will set off to Winterfell as soon as you made your decision.  
and：Fuck those Lannisters，but you must help me on this, Ned, for you help me won the damned chair.  
Robert Baratheon

Eddard sighed again, frustrated, but he must announce the news.Thus he walks out the room and join the meal with his family.Robb,Jon,Sansa,Arya and Bran has already begun.From the other side of the hall,he saw his eldest daughter,Lyria,slowly led his youngest son Rickon to the table.  
Eddard took a deep breath and begin, “There's a letter arrived from King's landing today ,”he says slowly，“to promote the relationships between House Lannister and Stark,one of you are going to be Ser Jamie Lannister's squire and a ward of House Lannister.”  
The hall went silent, it's obvious that no one wants to go to the notorious House.Eddard is tangled for he himself doesn't want to give his child away."I will go,"Lyria interrupted his thought,"father you always say we should be responsible, also you know my passion in swordsfighting, so this will be my duty. "  
"Lyria,you don't need to--"Catelyn wants to pursuade her,but Master Luwin states.  
"my lord,my lady,I know this is not the best solution,but since we cannot sent any boys into Tywin Lannister's hands,and also lady Lyria's willing to do this,I suggest that this is the best solution we had."  
"Lyria,are you sure you are going to do this?"Eddard looked at his daughter worrying.  
"Yes , father."  
"Then so be it,I will reply Robert,Ser Jamie should be here in a fortnight."


	2. The Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So the Starks has made their decision, and Jamie will arrive at this chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy reading! Comments are welcome.

“You could have me instead , Ria.”  
"I know,Robb,you've told me a million times.But you heard father,we cannot let you go."Lyria shook her head in frustration.Lannister is arriving at the morrow,and she is actually looking forward to it, but this is because Sansa spent half of her time telling her how handsome he is, and Arya was furious enough to stop talking to her because she could squire the knight who is one of the top swordsmen of the Seven Kingdoms. Bran also asked her enviously every day.  
"No matter what,let's practice one more time."  
"right then,"  
After they finish sparring, a problem come to Lyria's mind.  
"Robb,"  
"What's up?"  
"I know father always had a strained relationship with the Lannisters , so what if he dislikes me?What if he despise me because I am a girl? "  
Robb cupped her face, his blue eyes stare at her grey ones."Then he is an idiot, and I promise you, sweet sister, me and Jon shall cut down every idiot without hesitation to defend your honor."  
Lyria chuckled, maybe it won't be so bad, she thought.

❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅

The next day,when Lyria is practising in the Training yard, a boy run towards her,clearly out of breath."Lady Lyria,Lord Eddard sent me to inform you that Jamie Lannister has arrived."  
"Thank you,"Godsdammit, I must look terrible.She thought as she hurried to the gate.Father and Mother are already waiting there,so does the rest of her family. She calmed her breath as much as possible and walked over to stand with her family. The gray city gate slowly opened and ran out of it, with a knight in white armor stopping in front of them. Jamie Lannister jumped down his horse and took off his helmet. Showing his blond hair and sharp green eyes, his smirk on his face get brighter when he came to her father.  
"Stark, I haven't seen you since the Trident. Sword getting old?" The last paragraph was close to her father. But she can still hear it and trembled a bit，afraid that father might offend the Lannister ."I don't participate in combats, because I don't want to let my opponent know my ability before actually fighting with him." Father replied, "Good answer," Lannister said arrogantly.  
"This is my daughter Lyria," father introduced, Lannister turned his head and stared straight at Lyria. She looked back without any weakness. "You know, when Robert told me, I never expected that my first squire was a girl," he said softly. She immediately felt anger ran through the whole body. The least thing she want others say was to question her ability on swordfighting because she's a girl.  
"I may be very young, Ser, And I am a girl, but I’m as qualified to spar as you!” She countered, Lannister looked surprised, and her father tried to stop her, but she didn’t care, “and I don’t need your permission to spar!" She ended the speech, Robb and Jon give her a look of "Are you crazy?" Their father give her with a frowning look, she regretted it now, unsure if she had offended him, but Lannister said flatly: "Some strength indeed, little wolf.", then step back: "We set off at noon, you have a morning to say goodbye." He said, then turned and left. .  
❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀

Lyria first said goodbye to the children, Rickon was too young to understand what was going on. She promised that Arya and Bran that she would write letters and told them to behave. She told Sansa that she would describe her life in King's landing to her, and then she said goodbye to Shane. The most uncomfortable was to leave Robb and Jon. They had been together for a long time, and then they promised that if anyone was not good to her, they would immediately start a Rebellion. Then came her mother and father.  
At noon, she rode her mare whirlwind and said goodbye to her mother, father and everyone again, and then she rode out the gate. They gradually drifted away. After a while, she turned back and looked at the grey city wall and the gray ice wolf flag flying above again, and turned away. Now I am a lone wolf, she thinks, a lone wolf in the lion pack.

❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀❀

A few days later, Lyria was guarding her luggage. Jamie went hunting, and he would not come back for a while, just then, she saw a group of men with long swords rushing over, robbers! She thought, but she had no weapons around her, only a wooden stick, she waved the wooden stick and stabbed one of the robbers' eyes. The man screamed painfully, apparently did not expect her to fight back. But then it was not so lucky. Two men took her to the ground, punched and kicked her, trying to figure out who she is. She screamed painfully. Suddenly she heard another scream, and the weight on her body had suddenly gone. It turned out that Jamie was back. His sword pierced one after another. When some people saw it, they immediately fled, after confirming that there was no robbers left, he put away the sword and lifted her up.  
"Can you stand up?" Lyria nodded. "Thank--thank you," she whispered, still not used to talking to him, but still thanked him. Lannister looked at her and shook his head. "There's nothing to thank about, if you are dead, your whole family will kill me." Then they went on for a day and arrived at the Red Fort.  
When they arrived at the gates of the Red Fort, what surprised her was that the King himself had actually come in person to greet them, accompanied by Queen Cersei and Ser Barrestain. They kneeled in front of the king. "Get up," the king glowed. They got up. The king carefully looked at her. "You have her eyes, Lyanna's eyes... How old are you, girl?" "Twelve, Your Grace." "Fuck you Kingslayer, your first one is so beautiful, cherish her," Robert said, laughing, "Yes, Your Grace," Jamie replied coldly. "This girl must learn to act decently, and don't seduce others to provoke a murder," the queen inserted in, the voice was cold, and there was something in the words. "I will also be careful to act your grace, our Starks do not fare well in the South of the Neck," she deliberately pretended to be the sweetest voice. The Queen also understood what she meant, so she picked up the king's arm and strode away.  
Soon after, a maid named Irene took her to her room. Irena was similar to her age, but she was living in the king. "Your room is this, Lady Lyria, you can call me if you have any needs, Sir Jamie is on the upper level, you can go to him."  
"Okay, Irene, and, since you are my maid, we don't need to be respected between us. You can call me Ria when no one is there. My brothers and sisters called me this way. "Irene seems to be flattered, and she even thanked her.  
After Irene left, Lyria opened the door and went in. The arrangement in the room almost made her stop breathing: this room is not too big than the others in the Red Fort, but it is still a lot better than when she was in Winterfell. This is several times larger , in the room there's a large, stunning velvet bed, a beautifully crafted window and a large wardrobe, and a wooden desk. Even better, all the parts were decorated with direwolves, and she thought that this should be the king's doing. She began to tidy up. After a moment someone knocked at the door, "Please come in," she shouted, coming in with a familiar figure, and Jamie Lannister came in. He had taken off his armor and his face was with that arrogant smile. "Ser Jamie, is there anything I need to do?" She got up and Lannister gestured to her to sit back on the bed. "I just came over to inform you that the training will start early tomorrow, unless you want to be punished, don't be late. Little wolf." "Thank you, Ser. I am sure I will not forget," she replied, watching him walking out of her room. Whether he saved his life or not, he was a Lannister, and Lannisters are untrustworthy.


	3. The Favor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jamie did two favors for Lyria.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank everybody for reading this fic, Enjoy reading！

Jamie

The next day morning, the girl arrived on time, and they begin without words. The girl dodged a few times, and they hardly clash swords.  
"You know you can't keep dodging forever, little wolf ," he teased ."Or do northmen just know how to run away like cowards?"She was certainly annoyed by him, for she rushes angrily towards him. This is what he had expected, and he easily grabs her on the wrist and collide his sword on her knees. The girl fell down in the mud."Try again or you want to just run away to your mommy ,wolf?"   
The girl looked him in anger, before she pushed herself up and said :"Again."This time she lasts a little longer before she was in mud again.  
Several days past，and he had to give that the girl is a good swordswoman indeed. Her coordination and flexibility were good and her speed was very fast.  
Until one day, when he passed the hall, he found that there was a chaos inside. Joffrey stood next to Cersei, their opposite is the girl. He walked in and wanted to find out what happened.   
Then Joffrey spoke to Robert: "Father! I was just giving a class to the little bitch! She should roll back to her place!"   
The girl was trying to fight back, but Jamie got to the middle of them. "Your graces,your Prince, this is just a children's disputes, Cersei, you take care of Joffrey, this girl is my squire, I will take care of her." "That's it," said the king. "Woman, you take care of your son, Kingslayer, you Also."   
Jamie immediately pulled the girl into his room. "Listen, little wolf, Joffrey is a prince, you can only tolerate him, and Cersei will want to see the you hurt eager than anyone , otherwise she will do it herself, understand?" The girl nodded. Lifting her head up, Jamie sees that there were a few bruises on it, and a few pieces of cuts. Her lips are bleeding and she couldn’t stop shaking. He realized that she was crying.   
Oh Gods. I won't think about seeing it in my life I could see a Stark cry, he thought, they were much too stubborn to do it in front of the Kingslayer. What would the honorable old Ned think when he sees how his daughter fall sobbing at my feet.   
But still he lifted the girl up and gently patted her back. "I know," he sighed, gently wiping tears for her. After her mood was calmed down, he escorted her back to her room and ordered not to let the prince or queen in , and if they entered, they would come to him immediately.

❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅

“What are you thinking Jamie? ”  
Cersei yelled at him, frustrated by what he has done.  
"She's just a little girl,Cersei, what do you want me to do? "  
“ She needs to be punished! ”  
"For what?"  
Cersei changed her expression into a soft one. She leaned to him and said,"Please Jamie, she disgraced Joffrey，she disgraced our child! "  
Jamie didn't answer her, and Cersei's mask dropped.  
"Fine. "She yelled,"I know you like her,Jamie. You're always the stupidest Lannister. "  
Then she stormed out of the room, leaving Jaime standing in the room.

❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅

After the Joffrey incident, the relationship between them eased more. Soon after, it was Joffrey’s 12-year-old naming ceremony, and the king decided to hold a contest.He himself participated without any doubt. When he asked the girl, she said that she was uncomfortable, and Jamie did not doubt.   
After the game started, the audience's eyes were attracted by a mysterious knight. The armor on his body was black and gray-blue. It was engraved with a white bird. His helmet was also bird-shaped. No one knew him or where he comes from. But he has been winning all the time until he finally face the Mountain.  
They both broke a few lances,when mountain suddenly throws himself at the mystery knight,the knight fell immediately with his nose broken then the knight left immediately, angered by his rudeness, and Joffrey shouted to kill him. Jamie immediately accepted the task because he wanted to face the knight himself.  
He followed the trail and chased it, but entered the Red Keep and finally came to a small room. He gently pushed the door open, raised the sword to prepare a duel, and the people inside were also prepared, but at this time he was stunned because the figure was so familiar,.  
"Little Wolf?" The girl stopped. Throwing the sword as she tried to escape, Jamie has already expected this. He immediately grabbed the girl's collar. "Are you crazy?" he asked, "Joffrey wants your head now! You might injury yourself or even die! What are you thinking about?!" "I'm sorry..." The girl muttered and lowered her head. "Go back to your room, bring the armor, don't let others see it." "What-what?" She looked up and looked surprised. "You heard what I said, don't let anyone see it." The girl glanced at him again and ran away obediently. Stark. He shook his head and went back to face the wrath of Joffrey.


	4. The returning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Lyria meets Tyrion and The King went to Winterfell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and leaving kudos! Comments are welcome.

Lyria

Frustrated, Lyria thought, I have already owed Jamie Lannister three favors, the common saying of "A Lannister always pay his debt " is not a joke, I must find a way to pay his debts. 

She is now in the library, the only place that is quiet and less crowded in King's landing. Suddenly, she could hear the sound of footsteps and humming , and she couldn’t help but feel very strange. Very few people would come to the library, especially in her corner. 

Lyria looked strangely to the side, only to see a person who was no taller than her waist , was walking with a book, his head and body were disproportionate, making his white gold hair and mismatched eyes more conspicuous. She suddenly realized that he was Tyrion, the younger brother of Ser Jamie, the youngest and ugliest son of the lord of Casterly Rock.  
"Lord Tyrion," she said, and the dwarf turned to her, seemingly a little surprised.

"Oh, so you must be the Stark girl I heard so much about, my brother's squire."

"Yes, my lord, I am Lyria Stark. It’s my pleasure to meet you here." 

"It's strange to meet you here, you have to know, for not many girls like to read books." He glanced at the book in her hand: "History of the Targaryen Family", "especially the book of that kind."

"Most girls don't practice swords. My lord, and don't even think about becoming the squire of one of the top knights in the seven kingdoms. Their field are in needlework,"

After they talked for a few minutes,Tyrion comments "Well,"He said. "Now I can see why my brother like you so much."

This time it was her turn to be surprised, "Ser Jamie?", how is this possible? He is a Lannister, I am Stark, but this seems to be the only explanation he has saved me three times.

"Yes, although he doesn't want to admit it," Tyrion chuckled. "He always mentions you, and I can see it from his eyes, and after meeting you several times.I can understand the reason now, you are really charming, Miss Lyria."

"Thank you, lord Tyrion." She blushed, she was rarely praised so much, and she didn't know how to answer. "Oh, don't bother with the formalities, I am not a lord."

"Then I also ask you to call me Lyria as well, I am not a lady." Tyrion laughed.

They talked for a long time, until Lyria remembered her duties, "Excuse me, my lord...Tyrian," she corrected herself immediately. "I am afraid I have some work to do." "Of course, I am looking forward to discuss history with you in the future,"

That night, bells rang over the Red Keep. Accompanied by the tears of Lysa Arryn's, the Hand, Jon Arryn died.  
On the second day, a crow set off from King's landing, which is going to arrive at Winterfell, informing Eddard Stark of the death of Jon Arryn and the news that the King was coming to the Winterfell.

❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅

 

The team of King Roberts was moving slowly , and the cold wind blew on everyone's face. Soon, snow appear in their vision. Although everyone is complaining about the weather, Lyria's mood is keeping lightening up. The North - everything she is familiar with is appearing in front of her eyes. 

But other people don't think so,for even if they have been away for two weeks, they are still in the north - and the scenery has not changed. When the Rangers reported that they could reach Winterfell in a day's time, everyone was relieved. 

Lyria also cheered secretly that if she stayed with the Queen and Joffrey for another day, she would be forced to go mad, but fortunately there were Tyrion and Jamie who kept her sane, so that she would not immediately commit suicide. 

Finally, nearer, nearer. They entered the Gates and saw the waving direwolf flag. When they entered the yard, she seemed to see that Arya came running with a helmet and brought a lot of chaos to the crowd, and she could not help to stop laughing.

The king jumped off the horse, embraced her father, messed up Ricky's hair, and after introduced to each family member, he shouted: "Ned, take me to the crepts, I want to pay my respects." 

"My Dear, we have already traveled for days, the dead can wait." 

"Shut up, woman." The king said impatiently. 

The father smiled apologetically to the queen and led Robert to the crepts.

She also jumped off the horse and ran to her family. Her mother holds her tightly, and Rickon also. Robb came over, he was obviously stronger and more serious, but they still embraced together. Sansa grew into a perfect lady, but her eyes stayed on Joffrey from time to time and that worried her. Arya is still so wild, and Bran is obviously a lot taller than she saw him last time.

"Let's go, I am going to take you to see something." Robb smirked at her, and Jon also appeared. 

"Jon!" she cried joyfully. 

"How is the Lannisters?" He seems to be tearing them into pieces if they are not good to her.

"I think they definitely won't try anything. I guess they will be scared when they hear that you and Robb are my brother," she said sarcastically. "Let's go." Robb grabbed her arm again.

 They came to Robb's room.

"What do you want to show me?" she asked doubtfully, hoping that it would not be a prank. 

"Look," Robb opened the door of his room. Suddenly, three creatures like dogs ran out, just bigger than the dogs. 

"They are…direwolves?" she asked in surprise, and Robb nodded.

"We found them two weeks ago. Come, this one is yours." He handed Lyria a one.

When he saw she raise her head in confusion, he explained, "Each of us have one, mine's Greywind, "The grey direwolf heard his name and raised his head. "Jon's Ghost," he pointed to the wolf who had white furs and red eyes. "Arya's is Nymeria, Sansa's Lady, and Rickon's is Shaggydog."She laughed at the name." Bran has not decided."   
Lyria looked at the direwolf in her arms. It was all gray, only the claws and the back were white. "I want to call her Blanca," she decided.

"A good name." Robb agreed. "Let's go, we must catch up with the welcome feast, otherwise we will run around the Winterfell for twenty laps." Lyria chuckled. And she and her brothers returned to the castle together.

❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅

 

She took a shower, and after wearing a carefully selected, light blue and silver dress, she turned her hair into a combination of North and South styles. "You look beautiful," her maid praised. Blanca also rub her shoes with her nose, making a snoring sound. 

"Sorry, but you can only stay here," she said softly to the direwolf. 

"The dance is about to begin, Lady Lyria," the maid reminded her. "You still have to start the feast," she reminded her. She still didn't know who she was going to walk through with the entire Winterfell hall, she hope it is Robb,but she didn't have time to think about it, and she went downstairs under the urging of the maid.


	5. The feast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon's POV of the welcome feast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and leaving kudos！Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Jon

The banquet finally opened. Rickon walked swayingly with Bran in front. The people who then came in were the King and lady Catelyn. He was very disappointed to find that the great warrior in the father’s tales, Robert Baratheon, was a fat man, followed by the father and the queen, the queen is beautiful, but the coldness in her eyes makes Jon dislikes her. After them there's the princes, Robb led Mycella to come up. Jon’s conclusion is that the 80% of the girl is boring, because she has been watching Robb smiling, but Robb too,who laughs like a fool.Then comes Jamie Lannister , people called him " The lion of the Lannister",but behind his whispering his other nickname "Kingslayer", he was born tall and handsome, with dazzling blonde hair and shiny green eyes, he was wearing Lannister crimson and golden armor, calmly carrying Lyria's hand, the latter looks very nervous. Jon found himself unable to leave his eyes. This is what a king should look like, he thought. His younger brother, Tyrion, was hidden behind the two, and all the advantages that the gods gave to Jamie and Cersei were not left to Tyrion. Jon looked at them with great interest.

In the last place of the Royal Family, he saw his uncle, Benjin Stark of the Night's Watch, and his father’s young ward, Theon Grejoy. When Banyan passed a gentle smile to him, Sean turned a blind eye to him, but it was not a day or two. After the VIPs were all seated, everyone toasted each other and gave each other a congratulatory message, and then the dinner was officially started.

Jon has been drinking since then and has not stopped yet.

There was something rubbing his feet under the long table, and he looked down and meet with a pair of red eyes. "Hungry?" he asked. There was half a honey-roasted chicken in the middle of the table. Jon reached out and peeled off a chicken leg. Suddenly, he had an idea,he use the meat knife to cut the whole chicken's meat and then let the remaining chicken bone slide from the legs to the ground. Ghost barbarically but quietly bite the bones. His brothers and sisters are not allowed to bring the wolf into the feast hall. Only the end of the hall where Jon is located, the number of dogs is too many, and naturally no one cares about his little wolf. He told himself that this is also a good blessing.

His eyes suddenly stinged, and he rudely cursed. He drank a large sip of wine and then watched Ghost swallow the whole chicken.

Jon smiled smugly, and went to the bottom of the table to touch the fluffy white furs of the little wolf. The little wolf looked up at him, biting his hand gently, then bowed his head and ate.

"Is this the famous direwolf?" a familiar voice asked beside him.

Jon looked up happily, and Uncle Benjin put his hand on his head and messed with his hair, as if he had just played the fur of Ghost. "Yes," he replied. "It's called Ghost."

"A very quiet wolf." His uncle concluded.

"It's very different from the others," Jon said. "It's never been loud, so I called it Ghost. It's also because of its color. The other wolves are either gray or black. "

"There are also direwolves outside the Great Wall. We often hear their howls when we go out to patrol." Benjin Stark looked at Jon with a meaningful look. "Don't you have dinner with your brothers at the same table?"

"That is in weekdays," Jon replied flatly. "Lady Catelyn thinks that if you let the Royal Family and Bastards dine at the same table tonight, it is an insult to them."

"It turns out to be." Uncle turned to look at the dining table on the high platform at the end of the hall. "My brother doesn't seem to have any celebrations tonight."

Jon also noticed that. for bastards must learn to observe and understand the emotions and sorrows hidden in people's eyes. His father’s demeanor is in line with the number of ceremonies, but there is a kind of restraint that Jon has never seen before. He didn't talk much, always glanced at the hall with his low eyes, his eyes were very empty. The king who was separated by two seats was drinking all night, and the big face of the hustle and bustle of the hustle and bustle was red. He kept toasting and listening to every joke. He was happy to go forward and he was eating endlessly like a hungry ghost. But the queen sitting next to him is like a cold statue. "The queen is also angry," Jon whispered to his uncle. "In the afternoon, the father took the king to the crepts, and the queen did not want him to go."

Benjin carefully examined Jon. "Jon, anything can't escape your eyes, is it? The Wall needs some talented men like you."

Jon proudly said: "Robb is better than me with a lance, but my sword is better. The Master also said that I am one of the best riders in the city."

"When you go back, take me with you." Jon suddenly got excited. "As long as you talk to father, he will agree, I know he will."

Uncle Benjin once again examined his face. "Jon, the Great Wall is a very difficult place for a boy."

"I am almost an adult," Jon argued. "I will be fifteen years old on the next name day, and Master Luwen says that bastards grow faster than other children."

"That's true." Benjin's mouth tilted slightly downwards. He picked up Jon's glass from the table, filled the wine with a nearby jug, and took a deep breath.

"Deamon Targaryen was only fourteen when he conquered Dorne." Jon added. The legendary young dragon king is his hero.

"That was a summer game," Uncle reminded. "You said this young king, in order to attack Dorne, loses 10,000 people. Later, in order to hold it, he lost 50,000. Someone should tell him that war is not a child's play." He sipped his mouth and wiped his mouth. "And, Daemon Targaryen died at the age of eighteen, I suggest that you should not forget about this?"

"I haven't forgotten anything," Jon boasted, alcohol made him more courageous. He tried to sit up straight so that he could look taller. "Uncle, I want to join the Night's Watch."

"Jon, you probably don't know. The Night's Watch is a group that works till death. We don't have families. We will never have children. We take responsibility as our duty and honor."

"Bastards has the same honor," Jon said. "I am ready to take the oath."

"You are just a fourteen-year-old child," replied Bunyan. "You are not an adult before you get laid with a woman."

"I don't care about that!" Jon slammed his fistson the table.

"If you know, you will care." Benjin said, "Child, if you know what the consequences will be, you will not be so eager to join."

Jon became angrier: "I am not your child!"

Benjin Stark stood up and said, "I am sorry that you are not my child." He patted Jon's shoulder. "When you have two or three bastards outside, come back to me if you still had the same idea."

Jon was trembling with anger. "I will never have any bastards outside," he said word by word, "Never!" He spit out the last sentence as a venom.

At this time, he was shocked that the people at the whole table were quiet, and everyone stared at him. He only felt his eyes full of tears, and finally he stood up.

"Excuse me." He said with the last trace of dignity, and then ran away before others saw his tears fall. He must have drunk too much, and his feet seemed to be tied, and immediately smashed with a waitress, causing a pot of spiced wine to spill on the ground, and the crowd laughed. The tears in the eyes of Jon's eyes rolled down the cheeks, and some wanted to stop him, but he continued to run toward the gate. Ghost followed him, and they run into the dark night...


	6. The fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bran took his fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, thank you for supporting this fic by reading and leaving kudos

Lyria

 

She watched with concern as Jon left the hall, and felt unfair for him secretly , just because his is lower than others, and others looked down on him. 

Later, she saw another noteworthy thing. Cersei was talking to Sansa, and her heart was filled with anger. How could they let her marry the bastard? Sansa is so naive, Cersei and Joffrey will eat her alive. She was too focused on their conversation, so that when a hand landed her shoulder, she was shocked.  
Lyria turned back and saw Jamie with his smirk, and again, she began to think that sometimes being a Lannister ward is really annoying. "Sorry, little wolf, but seeing your eyes at my sister, I thought you wanted to kill her." 

"I didn't," she said immediately. "I just... too focused."

"Maybe. Don't you mind dancing with me? After all, these beautiful girls are getting less and less." 

Lyria ignored his tease. "Sorry, I am not feeling very comfortable, may I be excused."

"At least let me escort you," 

"I thank you for your kindness, ser, but I just want to be alone." Then she left the hall and returned to her room. 

Blanca saw her, and run to her feet. Lyria picked her up and sighed, trying to sort out what happened today. Direwolves were found south of the Wall. My father was to be the Hand. Sansa was going to marry Joffrey. She and Arya had to go to King's landing. She sighed again, winter is coming. She remembered the family words, and a trace of grim look across her face. Winter is coming.

❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅

A few days later, the king decided to enrich the courses at their farewell party since they went to play wild boar. Sir Jamie gave her a day off to stay with her family, which made Lyria felt strange, because he usually likes to keep her up. But soon, Sansa and Arya surrounded her, and she left it behind.

"How was the Kingslayer, is he not..." Arya wants to know everything about Jamie.

"Arya! He is a knight, you shouldn't insult him like this!" Sansa said in shock and disgust. 

Her sister turned her eyes and said in a mocking tone: "You said that just because he was handsome , stupid." 

Sansa was about to fight back, but Lyria immediately intervened, "Arya, you shouldn’t call him that way, no matter if he is or not. And he is very good to me. I have not been hurt.” At this time, Septa Mordane came over. “Did you see Bran?”

Ria then felt an ominous panic. They shook their heads. "I will find him," she said immediately, running to the towers where Bran often climbed. Blanca appeared from nowhere, and ran with her. "Girl, take me to Bran. "She ordered the direwolf who immediately ran to the broken tower.

She ran to the Broken tower. When she saw who was crouching in the grass under the tower, she suddenly felt that the air in her lungs had become ice. The familiar face, the familiar clothes, no...

It was Bran.

❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅

In the next few days, Lyria’s world was chaotic, and her mind was full of Bran’s bloody body under the tower. She didn’t eat nor sleep, just stayed at Bran’s bed with mother. When Master Luwin announced that he could survive, it was certainly good news. But when she learnt that he could no longer stand, she could no longer control herself. 

Seven years old... He was so small, so small, and he did not even got the chance to feel the beauty of life before he was cruelly taken the right to walk. He was supposed to be a knight, and join the court, but now he will never be able to walk, gods... How can you be so cruel? Why are you doing this to him? She couldn't find the answer to these questions. She just cried every day, crying, until the tears dried up... She also forgot her duty as a squire, she just guard beside him, afraid that if he breathed his last, she would not be there. That's it, day by day.

"Ria," one day, probably in the morning, time has not been a concept, she does not care, "Ria, the king has waited for enough, he will leave tomorrow," Robb gently called her. 

"Father ordered you to come to break your fast with us," 

"Tell him that I am not hungry," tears almost crossed her face and left, Bran... He hasn't woken up yet. 

"Tell him I won't go until Blan wakes up." "You and I both know that you have to leave, Ria, but …I can still allow you to stay for the last hours."

She nodded gratefully and returned to her spot. Robb sighed and kissed Bran's forehead before he leave.


	7. The ride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So here we go！Ned is going to King's landing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy！

Eddard

 

The summons came in the hour before the dawn, when the world was still in grey.

Alyn shook him roughly from his dreams and Ned stumbled into the predawn chill, groggy from sleep, to find his horse saddled and the king already mounted. Robert wore thick brown gloves and aheavy fur cloak with a hood that covered his ears, and looked for all the world like a bear sitting ahorse. “Up, Stark!” he roared. “Up, up! We have matters of state to discuss.”

“By all means,” Ned said. “Come inside, Your Grace.” Alyn lifted the flap of the tent.

“No, no, no,” Robert said. His breath steamed with every word. “The camp is full of ears. Besides, I want to ride out and taste this country of yours.” Ser Boros and Ser Meryn waited behind him with a dozen guardsmen, Ned saw. There was nothing to do but rub the sleep from his eyes,dress, and mount up.

Robert set the pace, driving his huge black destrier hard as Ned galloped along beside him, trying to keep up. He called out a question as they rode, but the wind blew his words away, and the king did not hear him. After that Ned rode in silence. They soon left the kingsroad and took off across rolling plains dark with mist. By then the guard had fallen back a small distance, safely out of earshot, but still Robert would not slow.

Dawn broke as they crested a low ridge, and finally the king pulled up. By then they were miles south of the main party. Robert was flushed and exhilarated as Ned reined up beside him. “Gods,” he swore, laughing, “it feels good to get out and ride the way a man was meant to ride! I swear, Ned, this creeping along is enough to drive a man mad.” He had never been a patient man, Robert Baratheon.

“That damnable wheelhouse, the way it creaks and groans, climbing every bump in the road as if it were a mountain … I promise you, if that wretched thing breaks another axle, I’m going to burn it,and Cersei can walk!”

Ned laughed. “I will gladly light the torch for you.”

“Good man!” The king clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve half a mind to leave them all behind and just keep going.”

A smile touched Ned’s lips. “I do believe you mean it.”

“I do, I do,” the king said. “What do you say, Ned? Just you and me, two vagabond knights on thekingsroad, our swords at our sides and the gods know what in front of us, and maybe a farmer’s daughter or a tavern wench to warm our beds tonight.”

“Would that we could,” Ned said, “but we have duties now, my liege … to the realm, to our children, I to my lady wife and you to your queen. We are not the boys we were.”

“You were never the boy you were,” Robert grumbled. “More’s the pity. And yet there was thatone time … what was her name, that common girl of yours? Becca? No, she was one of mine, godslove her, black hair and these sweet big eyes, you could drown in them. Yours was … Aleena? No.

You told me once. Was it Merryl? You know the one I mean, your bastard’s mother?”

“Her name was Wylla,” Ned replied with cool courtesy, “and I would sooner not speak of her.”

“Wylla. Yes.” The king grinned. “She must have been a rare wench if she could make LordEddard Stark forget his honor, even for an hour. You never told me what she looked like …”

Ned’s mouth tightened in anger. “Nor will I. Leave it be, Robert, for the love you say you bear me.I dishonored myself and I dishonored Catelyn, in the sight of gods and men.”

“Gods have mercy, you scarcely knew Catelyn.”

“I had taken her to wife. She was carrying my child.”

“You are too hard on yourself, Ned. You always were. Damn it, no woman wants Baelor the Blessed in her bed.” He slapped a hand on his knee. “Well, I’ll not press you if you feel so strong about it, though I swear, at times you’re so prickly you ought to take the hedgehog as your sigil.”

The rising sun sent fingers of light through the pale white mists of dawn. A wide plain spread out beneath them, bare and brown, its flatness here and there relieved by long, low hummocks. Ned pointed them out to his king. “The barrows of the First Men.”

Robert frowned. “Have we ridden onto a graveyard?”

“There are barrows everywhere in the north, Your Grace,” Ned told him. “This land is old.”

“And cold,” Robert grumbled, pulling his cloak more tightly around himself. The guard had reined up well behind them, at the bottom of the ridge. “Well, I did not bring you out here to talk of graves or bicker about your bastard. There was a rider in the night, from Lord Varys in King’s Landing. Here.” The king pulled a paper from his belt and handed it to Ned.

Varys the eunuch was the king’s master of whisperers. He served Robert now as he had onceserved Aerys Targaryen. Ned unrolled the paper with trepidation, thinking of Lysa and her terrible accusation, but the message did not concern Lady Arryn. “What is the source for this information?”

“Do you remember Ser Jorah Mormont?”

“Would that I might forget him,” Ned said bluntly. The Mormonts of Bear Island were an old house, proud and honorable, but their lands were cold and distant and poor. Ser Jorah had tried to swell the family coffers by selling some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver. As the Mormonts were bannermen to the Starks, his crime had dishonored the north. Ned had made the long journey west to Bear Island, only to find when he arrived that Jorah had taken ship beyond the reach of Ice and the king’s justice. Five years had passed since then.

“Ser Jorah is now in Pentos, anxious to earn a royal pardon that would allow him to return from exile,” Robert explained. “Lord Varys makes good use of him.”

“So the slaver has become a spy,” Ned said with distaste. He handed the letter back. “I would rather he become a corpse.”

“Varys tells me that spies are more useful than corpses,” Robert said. “Jorah aside, what do you make of his report?”

“Daenerys Targaryen has wed some Dothraki horselord. What of it? Shall we send her a wedding gift?”

The king frowned. “A knife, perhaps. A good sharp one, and a bold man to wield it.”

Ned did not feign surprise; Robert’s hatred of the Targaryens was a madness in him. He remembered the angry words they had exchanged when Tywin Lannister had presented Robert withthe corpses of Rhaegar’s wife and children as a token of fealty. Ned had named that murder; Robert called it war. When he had protested that the young prince and princess were no more than babes, his new-made king had replied, “I see no babes. Only dragonspawn.” Not even Jon Arryn had been able to calm that storm. Eddard Stark had ridden out that very day in a cold rage, to fight the last battles of the war alone in the south. It had taken another death to reconcile them; Lyanna’s death, and the grief they had shared over her passing.

This time, Ned resolved to keep his temper. “Your Grace, the girl is scarcely more than a child. You are no Tywin Lannister, to slaughter innocents.” It was said that Rhaegar’s little girl had cried as they dragged her from beneath her bed to face the swords. The boy had been no more than a babe in arms, yet Lord Tywin’s soldiers had torn him from his mother’s breast and dashed his head against awall.

“And how long will this one remain an innocent?” Robert’s mouth grew hard. “This child will soon enough spread her legs and start breeding more dragonspawn to plague me.”

“Nonetheless,” Ned said, “the murder of children … it would be vile … unspeakable …”

“Unspeakable?” the king roared. “What Aerys did to your brother Brandon was unspeakable. The way your lord father died, that was unspeakable. And Rhaegar … how many times do you think he raped your sister? How many hundreds of times?” His voice had grown so loud that his horse whinnied nervously beneath him. The king jerked the reins hard, quieting the animal, and pointed an angry finger at Ned. “I will kill every Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they are as dead as their dragons, and then I will piss on their graves.”

Ned knew better than to defy him when the wrath was on him. If the years had not quenched Robert’s thirst for revenge, no words of his would help. “You can’t get your hands on this one, can you?” he said quietly.

The king’s mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. “No, gods be cursed. Some pox-ridden Pentos hicheesemonger had her brother and her walled up on his estate with pointy-hatted eunuchs all around them, and now he’s handed them over to the Dothraki. I should have had them both killed years ago,when it was easy to get at them, but Jon was as bad as you. More fool I, I listened to him.”

“Jon Arryn was a wise man and a good Hand.”

Robert snorted. The anger was leaving him as suddenly as it had come. “This Khal Drogo is said to have a hundred thousand men in his horde. What would Jon say to that?”

“He would say that even a million Dothraki are no threat to the realm, so long as they remain onthe other side of the narrow sea,” Ned replied calmly. “The barbarians have no ships. They hate and fear the open sea.”

The king shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “Perhaps. There are ships to be had in the Free Cities,though. I tell you, Ned, I do not like this marriage. There are still those in the Seven Kingdoms who call me Usurper. Do you forget how many houses fought for Targaryen in the war? They bide their time for now, but give them half a chance, they will murder me in my bed, and my sons with me. If the beggar king crosses with a Dothraki horde at his back, the traitors will join him.”

“He will not cross,” Ned promised. “And if by some mischance he does, we will throw him back into the sea. Once you choose a new Warden of the East—”

The king groaned. “For the last time, I will not name the Arryn boy Warden. I know the boy is your nephew, but with Targaryens climbing in bed with Dothraki, I would be mad to rest one quarter of the realm on the shoulders of a sickly child.”

Ned was ready for that. “Yet we still must have a Warden of the East. If Robert Arryn will not do,name one of your brothers. Stannis proved himself at the siege of Storm’s End, surely.”

He let the name hang there for a moment. The king frowned and said nothing. He looked uncomfortable.

“That is,” Ned finished quietly, watching, “unless you have already promised the honor to another.”

For a moment Robert had the grace to look startled. Just as quickly, the look became annoyance.

“What if I have?”

“It’s Jaime Lannister, is it not?”

Robert kicked his horse back into motion and started down the ridge toward the barrows. Ned kept pace with him. The king rode on, eyes straight ahead. “Yes,” he said at last. A single hard word to endthe matter.

“Kingslayer,” Ned said. The rumors were true, then. He rode on dangerous ground now, he knew.

“An able and courageous man, no doubt,” he said carefully, “but his father is Warden of the West,Robert. In time Ser Jaime will succeed to that honor. No one man should hold both East and West.”

He left unsaid his real concern; that the appointment would put half the armies of the realm into the hands of Lannisters.

“I will fight that battle when the enemy appears on the field,” the king said stubbornly. “At the moment, Lord Tywin looms eternal as Casterly Rock, so I doubt that Jaime will be succeeding anytime soon. Don’t vex me about this, Ned, the stone has been set.”

“Your Grace, may I speak frankly?”

“I seem unable to stop you,” Robert grumbled. They rode through tall brown grasses.

“Can you trust Jaime Lannister?”

“He is my wife’s twin, a Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard, his life and fortune and honor allbound to mine.”

“As they were bound to Aerys Targaryen’s,” Ned pointed out.

“Why should I mistrust him? He has done everything I have ever asked of him. His sword helped win the throne I sit on.”

His sword helped taint the throne you sit on, Ned thought, but he did not permit the words to pass his lips. “He swore a vow to protect his king’s life with his own. Then he opened that king’s throat with a sword.”

“Seven hells, someone had to kill Aerys!” Robert said, reining his mount to a sudden halt beside an ancient barrow. “If Jaime hadn’t done it, it would have been left for you or me.”

“We were not Sworn Brothers of the Kingsguard,” Ned said. The time had come for Robert to hear the whole truth, he decided then and there. “Do you remember the Trident, Your Grace?”

“I won my crown there. How should I forget it?”

“You took a wound from Rhaegar,” Ned reminded him. “So when the Targaryen host broke and ran, you gave the pursuit into my hands. The remnants of Rhaegar’s army fled back to King’s Landing. We followed. Aerys was in the Red Keep with several thousand loyalists. I expected to find the gates closed to us.”

Robert gave an impatient shake of his head. “Instead you found that our men had already taken the city. What of it?”

“Not our men,” Ned said patiently. “Lannister men. The lion of Lannister flew over the ramparts,not the crowned stag. And they had taken the city by treachery.”

The war had raged for close to a year. Lords great and small had flocked to Robert’s banners;others had remained loyal to Targaryen. The mighty Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the Wardens of theWest, had remained aloof from the struggle, ignoring calls to arms from both rebels and royalists.

Aerys Targaryen must have thought that his gods had answered his prayers when Lord Tywin Lannister appeared before the gates of King’s Landing with an army twelve thousand strong,professing loyalty. So the mad king had ordered his last mad act. He had opened his city to the lion sat the gate.

“Treachery was a coin the Targaryens knew well,” Robert said. The anger was building in him again. “Lannister paid them back in kind. It was no less than they deserved. I shall not trouble my sleep over it.”

“You were not there,” Ned said, bitterness in his voice. Troubled sleep was no stranger to him. He had lived his lies for fourteen years, yet they still haunted him at night. “There was no honor in that conquest.”

“The Others take your honor!” Robert swore. “What did any Targaryen ever know of honor? Go down into your crypt and ask Lyanna about the dragon’s honor!”

“You avenged Lyanna at the Trident,” Ned said, halting beside the king. Promise me, Ned, she had whispered.

“That did not bring her back.” Robert looked away, off into the grey distance. “The gods be damned. It was a hollow victory they gave me. A crown … it was the girl I prayed them for. Your sister, safe … and mine again, as she was meant to be. I ask you, Ned, what good is it to wear a crown? The gods mock the prayers of kings and cowherds alike.”

“I cannot answer for the gods, Your Grace … only for what I found when I rode into the throne room that day,” Ned said. “Aerys was dead on the floor, drowned in his own blood. His dragon skulls stared down from the walls. Lannister’s men were everywhere. Jaime wore the white cloak of the Kingsguard over his golden armor. I can see him still. Even his sword was gilded. He was seated on the Iron Throne, high above his knights, wearing a helm fashioned in the shape of a lion’s head. How he glittered!”

“This is well known,” the king complained.

“I was still mounted. I rode the length of the hall in silence, between the long rows of dragonskulls. It felt as though they were watching me, somehow. I stopped in front of the throne, looking up at him. His golden sword was across his legs, its edge red with a king’s blood. My men were filling the room behind me. Lannister’s men drew back. I never said a word. I looked at him seated there on the throne, and I waited. At last Jaime laughed and got up. He took off his helm, and he said to me,‘Have no fear, Stark. I was only keeping it warm for our friend Robert. It’s not a very comfortable seat, I’m afraid.’”

The king threw back his head and roared. His laughter startled a flight of crows from the tall brown grass. They took to the air in a wild beating of wings. “You think I should mistrust Lannister because he sat on my throne for a few moments?” He shook with laughter again. “Jaime was all of seventeen,Ned. Scarce more than a boy.”

“Boy or man, he had no right to that throne.”

“Perhaps he was tired,” Robert suggested. “Killing kings is weary work. Gods know, there’s no place else to rest your ass in that damnable room. And he spoke truly, it is a monstrous uncomfortable chair. In more ways than one.” The king shook his head. “Well, now I know Jaime’s dark sin, and the matter can be forgotten. I am heartily sick of secrets and squabbles and matters of state, Ned. It’sall as tedious as counting coppers. Come, let’s ride, you used to know how. I want to feel the wind inmy hair again.” He kicked his horse back into motion and galloped up over the barrow, raining earthdown behind him.

For a moment Ned did not follow. He had run out of words, and he was filled with a vast sense of helplessness. Not for the first time, he wondered what he was doing here and why he had come. He was no Jon Arryn, to curb the wildness of his king and teach him wisdom. Robert would do what he pleased, as he always had, and nothing Ned could say or do would change that. He belonged in Winterfell. He belonged with Catelyn in her grief, and with Bran.

A man could not always be where he belonged, though. Resigned, Eddard Stark put his boots into his horse and set off after the king.


	8. The King's road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some events that happens on the King's road.

Sansa

 

Eddard Stark had left before dawn, Septa Mordane informed Sansa as they broke their fast. “The king sent for him. Another hunt, I do believe. There are still wild aurochs in these lands, I am told.”

“I’ve never seen an aurochs,” Sansa said, feeding a piece of bacon to Lady under the table. The direwolf took it from her hand, as delicate as a queen.

Septa Mordane sniffed in disapproval. “A noble lady does not feed dogs at her table,” she said,breaking off another piece of comb and letting the honey drip down onto her bread.

“She’s not a dog, she’s a direwolf,” Sansa pointed out as Lady licked her fingers with a rough tongue. “Anyway, Father said we could keep them with us if we want.”

The septa was not appeased. “You’re a good girl, Sansa, but I do vow, when it comes to that creature you’re as willful as your sister Arya.” She scowled. “And where is Arya this morning?”

“She wasn’t hungry,” Sansa said, knowing full well that her sister had probably stolen down to the kitchen hours ago and wheedled a breakfast out of some cook’s boy.

“Do remind her to dress nicely today. The grey velvet, perhaps. We are all invited to ride with the queen and Princess Myrcella in the royal wheelhouse, and we must look our best.”

“Is Lyria coming? ”She asked, hoping that her older sister will come. Though she wield a sword, she is not as boyish as Arya.

"I don't think so, she will train with Ser Jamie Lannister." the septa answers,"Still, you can ask the Queen if you can watch."

Sansa nods, she could not wait to be there. She had brushed out her long auburn hair until it shone, and picked her nicest blue silks. She had been looking forward to today for more than a week. It was a great honor to ride with the queen, and besides, Prince Joffrey might be there. Her betrothed. Just thinking it made her feel a strange fluttering inside, even though they were not to marry for years and years.

Sansa did not really know Joffrey yet, but she was already in love with him. He was all she ever dreamt her prince should be, tall and handsome and strong, with hair like gold. She treasured every chance to spend time with him, few as they were. The only thing that scared her about today was Arya. Arya had a way of ruining everything. You never knew what she would do. “I’ll tell her,” Sansa said uncertainly, “but she’ll dress the way she always does.” She hoped it wouldn’t be too embarrassing. “May I be excused?”

“You may.” Septa Mordane helped herself to more bread and honey, and Sansa slid from the bench. Lady followed at her heels as she ran from the inn’s common room.

Outside, she stood for a moment amidst the shouts and curses and the creak of wooden wheels asthe men broke down the tents and pavilions and loaded the wagons for another day’s march. The inn was a sprawling three-story structure of pale stone, the biggest that Sansa had ever seen, but even so,it had accommodations for less than a third of the king’s party, which had swollen to more than four hundred with the addition of her father’s household and the free riders who had joined them on the road.

She found Arya on the banks of the Trident, trying to hold Nymeria still while she brushed dried mud from her fur. The direwolf was not enjoying the process. Arya was wearing the same riding leathers she had worn yesterday and the day before.

“You better put on something pretty,” Sansa told her. “Septa Mordane said so. We’re traveling in the queen’s wheelhouse with Princess Myrcella today.”

“I’m not,” Arya said, trying to brush a tangle out of Nymeria’s matted grey fur. “Mycah and I are going to ride upstream and look for rubies at the ford.”

“Rubies,” Sansa said, lost. “What rubies?”

Arya gave her a look like she was so stupid. “Rhaegar’s rubies. This is where King Robert killed  
him and won the crown.”

Sansa regarded her scrawny little sister in disbelief. “You can’t look for rubies, the princess is expecting us. The queen invited us both.”

“I don’t care,” Arya said. “The wheelhouse doesn’t even have windows, you can’t see a thing.”

“What could you want to see?” Sansa said, annoyed. She had been thrilled by the invitation, andher stupid sister was going to ruin everything, just as she’d feared. “It’s all just fields and farms and holdfasts.”

“It is not,” Arya said stubbornly. “If you came with us sometimes, you’d see.”

“I hate riding,” Sansa said fervently. “All it does is get you soiled and dusty and sore.”

Arya shrugged. “Hold still,” she snapped at Nymeria, “I’m not hurting you.” Then to Sansa she said, “When we were crossing the Neck, I counted thirty-six flowers I never saw before, and Mycah showed me a lizard-lion.”

Sansa shuddered. They had been twelve days crossing the Neck, rumbling down a crooked causeway through an endless black bog, and she had hated every moment of it. The air had been damp and clammy, the causeway so narrow they could not even make proper camp at night, they hadto stop right on the kingsroad. Dense thickets of half-drowned trees pressed close around them,branches dripping with curtains of pale fungus. Huge flowers bloomed in the mud and floated on pools of stagnant water, but if you were stupid enough to leave the causeway to pluck them, there were quicksands waiting to suck you down, and snakes watching from the trees, and lizard-lions floating half-submerged in the water, like black logs with eyes and teeth.

None of which stopped Arya, of course. One day she came back grinning her horsey grin, her hairall tangled and her clothes covered in mud, clutching a raggedy bunch of purple and green flowers for father. Sansa kept hoping he would tell Arya to behave herself and act like the highborn lady she was supposed to be, but he never did, he only hugged her and thanked her for the flowers. That just made her worse.

Then it turned out the purple flowers were called poison kisses, and Arya got a rash on her arms.

Sansa would have thought that might have taught her a lesson, but Arya laughed about it, and the next day she rubbed mud all over her arms like some ignorant bog woman just because her friend Mycah told her it would stop the itching. She had bruises on her arms and shoulders too, dark purple welts and faded green-and-yellow splotches; Sansa had seen them when her sister undressed for sleep. How she had gotten those only the seven gods knew.

Arya was still going on, brushing out Nymeria’s tangles and chattering about things she’d seen onthe trek south. “Last week we found this haunted watchtower, and the day before we chased a herd ofwild horses. You should have seen them run when they caught a scent of Nymeria.” The wolf wriggled in her grasp and Arya scolded her. “Stop that, I have to do the other side, you’re all muddy.”

“You’re not supposed to leave the column,” Sansa reminded her. “Father said so.”

Arya shrugged. “I didn’t go far. Anyway, Nymeria was with me the whole time. I don’t always gooff, either. Sometimes it’s fun just to ride along with the wagons and talk to people.”

Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to talk to: squires and grooms and serving girls,old men and naked children, rough-spoken free riders of uncertain birth. Arya would make friends with anybody. This Mycah was the worst; a butcher’s boy, thirteen and wild, he slept in the meat wagon and smelled of the slaughtering block. Just the sight of him was enough to make Sansa feel sick, but Arya seemed to prefer his company to hers.

Sansa was running out of patience now. “You have to come with me,” she told her sister firmly.

“You can’t refuse the queen. Septa Mordane will expect you.”

Arya ignored her. She gave a hard yank with the brush. Nymeria growled and spun away,affronted. “Come back here!”

“There’s going to be lemon cakes and tea,” Sansa went on, all adult and reasonable. Lady brushed against her leg. Sansa scratched her ears the way she liked, and Lady sat beside her on her haunches,watching Arya chase Nymeria. “Why would you want to ride a smelly old horse and get all sore and sweaty when you could recline on feather pillows and eat cakes with the queen?”

“I don’t like the queen,” Arya said casually. Sansa sucked in her breath, shocked that even Arya would say such a thing, but her sister prattled on, heedless. “She won’t even let me bring Nymeria.Anyway, why should I care? Lyria dislikes her as well."

She thrust the brush under her belt and stalked her wolf. Nymeria watched her approach warily.

“A royal wheelhouse is no place for a wolf,” Sansa said. “And Princess Myrcella is afraid of  
them, you know that.”

“Myrcella is a little baby.” Arya grabbed Nymeria around her neck, but the moment she pulled out the brush again the direwolf wriggled free and bounded off. Frustrated, Arya threw down the brush. “Bad wolf!” she shouted.

Sansa couldn’t help but smile a little. The kennel master once told her that an animal takes after its master. She gave Lady a quick little hug. Lady licked her cheek. Sansa giggled. Arya heard and whirled around, glaring. “I don’t care what you say, I’m going out riding.” Her long horsey face gotthe stubborn look that meant she was going to do something willful.

“Gods be true, Arya, sometimes you act like such a child,” Sansa said. “I’ll go by myself then. It will be ever so much nicer that way. Lady and I will eat all the lemon cakes and just have the best time without you.”

She turned to walk off, but Arya shouted after her, “They won’t let you bring Lady either.” She was gone before Sansa could think of a reply, chasing Nymeria along the river.

Alone and humiliated, Sansa took the long way back to the inn, where she knew Septa Mordane would be waiting. Lady padded quietly by her side. She was almost in tears. All she wanted was for things to be nice and pretty, the way they were in the songs. Why couldn’t Arya be sweet and delicate and kind, like Princess Myrcella? She would have liked a sister like that.

Sansa could never understand how two sisters, born only two years apart, could be so different. It would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard, like their half brother Jon. She even looked likeJon, with the long face and brown hair of the Starks, and nothing of their lady mother in her face or her coloring. And Jon’s mother had been common, or so people whispered. Once, when she was littler, Sansa had even asked Mother if perhaps there hadn’t been some mistake. Perhaps the grumkinshad stolen her real sister. But Mother had only laughed and said no, Arya was her daughter and Sansa’s trueborn sister, blood of their blood. Sansa could not think why Mother would want to lie about it, so she supposed it had to be true.

As she neared the center of camp, her distress was quickly forgotten. A crowd had gathered around the queen’s wheelhouse. Sansa heard excited voices buzzing like a hive of bees. The doors had been thrown open, she saw, and the queen stood at the top of the wooden steps, smiling down at someone.

She heard her saying, “The council does us great honor, my good lords.”

“What’s happening?” she asked a squire she knew.

“The council sent riders from King’s Landing to escort us the rest of the way,” he told her. “An honor guard for the king.”

Anxious to see, Sansa let Lady clear a path through the crowd. People moved aside hastily for the direwolf. When she got closer, she saw two knights kneeling before the queen, in armor so fine and gorgeous that it made her blink.

One knight wore an intricate suit of white enameled scales, brilliant as a field of new-fallen snow,with silver chasings and clasps that glittered in the sun. When he removed his helm, Sansa saw that hewas an old man with hair as pale as his armor, yet he seemed strong and graceful for all that. From hisshoulders hung the pure white cloak of the Kingsguard.

His companion was a man near twenty whose armor was steel plate of a deep forest-green. He was the handsomest man Sansa had ever set eyes upon; tall and powerfully made, with jet-black hair that fell to his shoulders and framed a clean-shaven face, and laughing green eyes to match his armor.

Cradled under one arm was an antlered helm, its magnificent rack shimmering in gold.

At first Sansa did not notice the third stranger. He did not kneel with the others. He stood to oneside, beside their horses, a gaunt grim man who watched the proceedings in silence. His face was pockmarked and beardless, with deepset eyes and hollow cheeks. Though he was not an old man, only a few wisps of hair remained to him, sprouting above his ears, but those he had grown long as a woman’s. His armor was iron-grey chainmail over layers of boiled leather, plain and unadorned, andit spoke of age and hard use. Above his right shoulder the stained leather hilt of the blade strapped tohis back was visible; a two-handed greatsword, too long to be worn at his side.

“The king is gone hunting, but I know he will be pleased to see you when he returns,” the queen was saying to the two knights who knelt before her, but Sansa could not take her eyes off the third man. He seemed to feel the weight of her gaze. Slowly he turned his head. Lady growled. A terror as overwhelming as anything Sansa Stark had ever felt filled her suddenly. She stepped backward and bumped into someone.

Strong hands grasped her by the shoulders, and for a moment Sansa thought it was her father, butwhen she turned, it was the burned face of Sandor Clegane looking down at her, his mouth twisted ina terrible mockery of a smile. “You are shaking, girl,” he said, his voice rasping. “Do I frighten you so much?”

He did, and had since she had first laid eyes on the ruin that fire had made of his face, though it seemed to her now that he was not half so terrifying as the other. Still, Sansa wrenched away from him, and the Hound laughed, and Lady moved between them, rumbling a warning. Sansa dropped to her knees to wrap her arms around the wolf. They were all gathered around gaping, she could feel their eyes on her, and here and there she heard muttered comments and titters of laughter.

“A wolf,” a man said, and someone else said, “Seven hells, that’s a direwolf,” and the first man said, “What’s it doing in camp?” and the Hound’s rasping voice replied, “The Starks use them for wetnurses,” and Sansa realized that the two stranger knights were looking down on her and Lady, swords in their hands, and then she was frightened again, and ashamed. Tears filled her eyes.

She heard the queen say, “Joffrey, go to her.”

And her prince was there.

“Leave her alone,” Joffrey said. He stood over her, beautiful in blue wool and black leather, his golden curls shining in the sun like a crown. He gave her his hand, drew her to her feet. “What is it,sweet lady? Why are you afraid? No one will hurt you. Put away your swords, all of you. The wolf is her little pet, that’s all.” He looked at Sandor Clegane. “And you, dog, away with you, you’re scaring my betrothed.”

The Hound, ever faithful, bowed and slid away quietly through the press. Sansa struggled to steady herself. She felt like such a fool. She was a Stark of Winterfell, a noble lady, and someday she would be a queen. “It was not him, my sweet prince,” she tried to explain. “It was the other one.”

The two stranger knights exchanged a look. “Payne?” chuckled the young man in the green armor.

The older man in white spoke to Sansa gently. “Ofttimes Ser Ilyn frightens me as well, sweet lady.He has a fearsome aspect.”

“As well he should.” The queen had descended from the wheelhouse. The spectators parted to make way for her. “If the wicked do not fear the King’s Justice, you have put the wrong man in the office.”

Sansa finally found her words. “Then surely you have chosen the right one, Your Grace,” she said,and a gale of laughter erupted all around her.

“Well spoken, child,” said the old man in white. “As befits the daughter of Eddard Stark. I am honored to know you, however irregular the manner of our meeting. I am Ser Barristan Selmy, of the Kingsguard.” He bowed.“I have met your sister before,she is a true beauty indeed, and a willful child, but you are even more beautiful than her.”

Sansa knew the name, and now the courtesies that Septa Mordane had taught her over the years came back to her. “The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard,” she said, “and councillor to Robert our king and to Aerys Targaryen before him. The honor is mine, good knight. Even in the far north, the singers praise the deeds of Barristan the Bold.”

The green knight laughed again. “Barristan the Old, you mean. Don’t flatter him too sweetly, child,he thinks overmuch of himself already.” He smiled at her. “Now, wolf girl, if you can put a name tome as well, then I must concede that you are truly our Hand’s daughter.”

Joffrey stiffened beside her. “Have a care how you address my betrothed.”

“I can answer,” Sansa said quickly, to quell her prince’s anger. She smiled at the green knight.

“Your helmet bears golden antlers, my lord. The stag is the sigil of the royal House. King Robert has two brothers. By your extreme youth, you can only be Renly Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End and councillor to the king, and so I name you.”

Ser Barristan chuckled. “By his extreme youth, he can only be a prancing jackanapes, and so Iname him.”

There was general laughter, led by Lord Renly himself. The tension of a few moments ago wasgone, and Sansa was beginning to feel comfortable … until Ser Ilyn Payne shouldered two men aside,and stood before her, unsmiling. He did not say a word. Lady bared her teeth and began to growl, alow rumble full of menace, but this time Sansa silenced the wolf with a gentle hand to the head. “I am sorry if I offended you, Ser Ilyn,” she said.

She waited for an answer, but none came. As the headsman looked at her, his pale colorless eyes seemed to strip the clothes away from her, and then the skin, leaving her soul naked before him. Still silent, he turned and walked away.

Sansa did not understand. She looked at her prince. “Did I say something wrong, Your Grace? Whywill he not speak to me?”

“Ser Ilyn has not been feeling talkative these past fourteen years,” Lord Renly commented with asly smile.

Joffrey gave his uncle a look of pure loathing, then took Sansa’s hands in his own. “Aerys Targaryen had his tongue ripped out with hot pincers.”

“He speaks most eloquently with his sword, however,” the queen said, “and his devotion to ourrealm is unquestioned.” Then she smiled graciously and said, “Sansa, the good councillors and I must speak together until the king returns with your father. I fear we shall have to postpone your day with Myrcella. Please give your sweet sister my apologies. Joffrey, perhaps you would be so kind as to entertain our guest today.”

“It would be my pleasure, Mother,” Joffrey said very formally. He took her by the arm and led her away from the wheelhouse, and Sansa’s spirits took flight. A whole day with her prince! She gazed at Joffrey worshipfully. He was so gallant, she thought. The way he had rescued her from Ser Ilyn and the Hound, why, it was almost like the songs, like the time Serwyn of the Mirror Shield saved the Princess Daeryssa from the giants, or Prince Aemon the Dragonknight championing Queen Naerys’s honor against evil Ser Morgil’s slanders.

The touch of Joffrey’s hand on her sleeve made her heart beat faster. “What would you like to do?”

Be with you, Sansa thought, but she said, “Whatever you’d like to do, my prince.”

Joffrey reflected a moment. “We could go riding.”

“Oh, I love riding,” Sansa said.

Joffrey glanced back at Lady, who was following at their heels. “Your wolf is liable to frighten the horses, and my dog seems to frighten you. Let us leave them both behind and set off on our own, what do you say?”

Sansa hesitated. “If you like,” she said uncertainly. “I suppose I could tie Lady up.” She did not quite understand, though. “I didn’t know you had a dog …”

Joffrey laughed. “He’s my mother’s dog, in truth. She has set him to guard me, and so he does.”

“You mean the Hound,” she said. She wanted to hit herself for being so slow. Her prince would never love her if she seemed stupid. “Is it safe to leave him behind?”

Prince Joffrey looked annoyed that she would even ask. “Have no fear, lady. I am almost a man grown, and I don’t fight with wood like your brothers and sister. All I need is this.” He drew his sword and showed it to her; a longsword adroitly shrunken to suit a boy of twelve, gleaming blue steel, castle-forged and double-edged, with a leather grip and a lion’s-head pommel in gold. Sansa exclaimed overit admiringly, and Joffrey looked pleased. “I call it Lion’s Tooth,” he said.

And so they left her direwolf and his bodyguard behind them, while they ranged east along the north bank of the Trident with no company save Lion’s Tooth.

It was a glorious day, a magical day. The air was warm and heavy with the scent of flowers, and the woods here had a gentle beauty that Sansa had never seen in the north. Prince Joffrey’s mount was a blood bay courser, swift as the wind, and he rode it with reckless abandon, so fast that Sansa was hard-pressed to keep up on her mare. It was a day for adventures. They explored the caves by the riverbank, and tracked a shadowcat to its lair, and when they grew hungry, Joffrey found a holdfast by its smoke and told them to fetch food and wine for their prince and his lady. They dined on trout freshfrom the river, and Sansa drank more wine than she had ever drunk before. “My father only lets us have one cup, and only at feasts,” she confessed to her prince.

“My betrothed can drink as much as she wants,” Joffrey said, refilling her cup.

They went more slowly after they had eaten. Joffrey sang for her as they rode, his voice high andsweet and pure. Sansa was a little dizzy from the wine. “Shouldn’t we be starting back?” she asked.

“Soon,” Joffrey said. “The battleground is right up ahead, where the river bends. That was where my father killed Rhaegar Targaryen, you know. He smashed in his chest, crunch, right through the armor.” Joffrey swung an imaginary warhammer to show her how it was done. “Then my uncle Jaime killed old Aerys, and my father was king. What’s that sound?”

Sansa heard it too, floating through the woods, a kind of wooden clattering, snack snack snack. “I don’t know,” she said. It made her nervous, though. “Joffrey, let’s go back.”

“I want to see what it is.” Joffrey turned his horse in the direction of the sounds, and Sansa had no choice but to follow. The noises grew louder and more distinct, the clack of wood on wood, and as they grew closer they heard heavy breathing as well, and now and then a grunt.

“Someone’s there,” Sansa said anxiously. She found herself thinking of Lady, wishing the direwolf was with her.

“You’re safe with me.” Joffrey drew his Lion’s Tooth from its sheath. The sound of steel on leather made her tremble. “This way,” he said, riding through a stand of trees.

Beyond, in a clearing overlooking the river, they came upon a boy and a girl playing at knights.

Their swords were wooden sticks, broom handles from the look of them, and they were rushing acrossthe grass, swinging at each other lustily. The boy was years older, a head taller, and much stronger,and he was pressing the attack. The girl, a scrawny thing in soiled leathers, was dodging and managing to get her stick in the way of most of the boy’s blows, but not all. When she tried to lunge at him, he caught her stick with his own, swept it aside, and slid his wood down hard on her fingers.

She cried out and lost her weapon.

Prince Joffrey laughed. The boy looked around, wide-eyed and startled, and dropped his stick in the grass. The girl glared at them, sucking on her knuckles to take the sting out, and Sansa was horrified.

“Arya?” she called out incredulously.

“Go away,” Arya shouted back at them, angry tears in her eyes. “What are you doing here? Leave us alone.”

Joffrey glanced from Arya to Sansa and back again. “Your sister?” She nodded, blushing. Joffrey examined the boy, an ungainly lad with a coarse, freckled face and thick red hair. “And who are you,boy?” he asked in a commanding tone that took no notice of the fact that the other was a year hissenior.

“Mycah,” the boy muttered. He recognized the prince and averted his eyes. “M’lord.”

“He’s the butcher’s boy,” Sansa said.

“He’s my friend,” Arya said sharply. “You leave him alone.”

“A butcher’s boy who wants to be a knight, is it?” Joffrey swung down from his mount, sword inhand. “Pick up your sword, butcher’s boy,” he said, his eyes bright with amusement. “Let us see how good you are.”

Mycah stood there, frozen with fear.

Joffrey walked toward him. “Go on, pick it up. Or do you only fight little girls?”

“She ast me to, m’lord,” Mycah said. “She ast me to.”

Sansa had only to glance at Arya and see the flush on her sister’s face to know the boy was telling the truth, but Joffrey was in no mood to listen. The wine had made him wild. “Are you going to pick up your sword?”

Mycah shook his head. “It’s only a stick, m’lord. It’s not no sword, it’s only a stick.”

“And you’re only a butcher’s boy, and no knight.” Joffrey lifted Lion’s Tooth and laid its point on Mycah’s cheek below the eye, as the butcher’s boy stood trembling. “That was my lady’s sister you were hitting, do you know that?” A bright bud of blood blossomed where his sword pressed into Mycah’s flesh, and a slow red line trickled down the boy’s cheek.

“Stop it!” Arya screamed. She grabbed up her fallen stick.

Sansa was afraid. “Arya, you stay out of this.”

“I won’t hurt him … much,” Prince Joffrey told Arya, never taking his eyes off the butcher’s boy.

Arya went for him.

Sansa slid off her mare, but she was too slow. Arya swung with both hands. There was a loud crackas the wood split against the back of the prince’s head, and then everything happened at once before Sansa’s horrified eyes. Joffrey staggered and whirled around, roaring curses. Mycah ran for the trees as fast as his legs would take him. Arya swung at the prince again, but this time Joffrey caught the blow on Lion’s Tooth and sent her broken stick flying from her hands. The back of his head was all bloody and his eyes were on fire. Sansa was shrieking, “No, no, stop it, stop it, both of you, you’re spoiling it,” but no one was listening. Arya scooped up a rock and hurled it at Joffrey’s head. She hit his horse instead, and the blood bay reared and went galloping off after Mycah. “Stop it, don’t, stop it!” Sansa screamed. Joffrey slashed at Arya with his sword, screaming obscenities, terrible words,filthy words. Arya darted back, frightened now, but Joffrey followed, hounding her toward the woods,backing her up against a tree. Sansa didn’t know what to do. She watched helplessly, almost blind from her tears.

Then a grey blur flashed past her, and suddenly Nymeria was there, leaping, jaws closing around Joffrey’s sword arm. The steel fell from his fingers as the wolf knocked him off his feet, and they rolled in the grass, the wolf snarling and ripping at him, the prince shrieking in pain. “Get it off,” he screamed. “Get it off!”

Arya’s voice cracked like a whip. “Nymeria!”

The direwolf let go of Joffrey and moved to Arya’s side. The prince lay in the grass, whimpering,cradling his mangled arm. His shirt was soaked in blood. Arya said, “She didn’t hurt you … much.”

She picked up Lion’s Tooth where it had fallen, and stood over him, holding the sword with both hands.

Joffrey made a scared whimpery sound as he looked up at her. “No,” he said, “don’t hurt me. I’ll tell my mother.”

“You leave him alone!” Sansa screamed at her sister.

Arya whirled and heaved the sword into the air, putting her whole body into the throw. The blue steel flashed in the sun as the sword spun out over the river. It hit the water and vanished with a splash. Joffrey moaned. Arya ran off to her horse, Nymeria loping at her heels.

After they had gone, Sansa went to Prince Joffrey. His eyes were closed in pain, his breath ragged.

Sansa knelt beside him. “Joffrey,” she sobbed. “Oh, look what they did, look what they did. My poor prince. Don’t be afraid. I’ll ride to the holdfast and bring help for you.” Tenderly she reached out and brushed back his soft blond hair.

His eyes snapped open and looked at her, and there was nothing but loathing there, nothing but the evilest contempt. “Then go,” he spit at her. “And don’t touch me.”


	9. The death of Lady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lady's death.

Eddard

 

“They’ve found her, my lord.”

Ned rose quickly. “Our men or Lannister’s?”

“It was Jory,” his steward Vayon Poole replied. “She’s not been harmed.”

“Thank the gods,” Ned said. His men had been searching for Arya for four days now, but the queen’s men had been out hunting as well. “Where is she? Tell Jory to bring her here at once.”

“I am sorry, my lord,” Poole told him. “The guards on the gate were Lannister men, and they informed the queen when Jory brought her in. She’s being taken directly before the king …”

“Damn that woman!” Ned said, striding to the door. “Find Sansa and bring her to the audience chamber. Her voice may be needed.” He descended the tower steps in a red rage. He had led searches himself for the first three days, and had scarcely slept an hour since Arya had disappeared. This morning he had been so heartsick and weary he could scarcely stand, but now his fury was on him,filling him with strength.

Men called out to him as he crossed the castle yard, but Ned ignored them in his haste. He would have run, but he was still the King’s Hand, and a Hand must keep his dignity. He was aware of the eyes that followed him, of the muttered voices wondering what he would do.

The castle was a modest holding a half day’s ride south of the Trident. The royal party had made themselves the uninvited guests of its lord, Ser Raymun Darry, while the hunt for Arya and the butcher’s boy was conducted on both sides of the river. They were not welcome visitors. Ser Raymun lived under the king’s peace, but his family had fought beneath Rhaegar’s dragon banners at theTrident, and his three older brothers had died there, a truth neither Robert nor Ser Raymun had forgotten. With king’s men, Darry men, Lannister men, and Stark men all crammed into a castle far too small for them, tensions burned hot and heavy.

The king had appropriated Ser Raymun’s audience chamber, and that was where Ned found them.

The room was crowded when he burst in. Too crowded, he thought; left alone, he and Robert might have been able to settle the matter amicably.

Robert was slumped in Darry’s high seat at the far end of the room, his face closed and sullen.

Cersei Lannister and her son stood beside him. The queen had her hand on Joffrey’s shoulder. Thick silken bandages still covered the boy’s arm.

Arya stood in the center of the room, alone but for Jory Cassel, every eye upon her. “Arya,” Ned called loudly. He went to her, his boots ringing on the stone floor. When she saw him, she cried out and began to sob.

Ned went to one knee and took her in his arms. She was shaking. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“I know,” he said. She felt so tiny in his arms, nothing but a scrawny little girl. It was hard to see how she had caused so much trouble. “Are you hurt?”

“No.” Her face was dirty, and her tears left pink tracks down her cheeks. “Hungry some. I ate some berries, but there was nothing else.”

“We’ll feed you soon enough,” Ned promised. He rose to face the king. “What is the meaning of this?” His eyes swept the room, searching for friendly faces. But for his own men, they were few enough. Ser Raymun Darry guarded his look well. Lord Renly wore a half smile that might mean anything, and old Ser Barristan was grave; the rest were Lannister men, and hostile. Their only good fortune was that both Jaime Lannister and Sandor Clegane were missing, leading searches north of the Trident, Lyria is not here too,she is with Jamie, this is also good because he don't want her involved in this mess. “Why was I not told that my daughter had been found?” Ned demanded, his voice ringing. “Why was she not brought to me at once?”

He spoke to Robert, but it was Cersei Lannister who answered. “How dare you speak to your king in that manner!”

At that, the king stirred. “Quiet, woman,” he snapped. He straightened in his seat. “I am sorry, Ned. I never meant to frighten the girl. It seemed best to bring her here and get the business done with quickly.”

“And what business is that?” Ned put ice in his voice.

The queen stepped forward. “You know full well, Stark. This girl of yours attacked my son. Her and her butcher’s boy. That animal of hers tried to tear his arm off.”

“That’s not true,” Arya said loudly. “She just bit him a little. He was hurting Mycah.”

“Joff told us what happened,” the queen said. “You and the butcher boy beat him with clubs while you set your wolf on him.”

“That’s not how it was,” Arya said, close to tears again. Ned put a hand on her shoulder.

“Yes it is!” Prince Joffrey insisted. “They all attacked me, and she threw Lion’s Tooth in the river!” Ned noticed that he did not so much as glance at Arya as he spoke.

“Liar!” Arya yelled.

“Shut up!” the prince yelled back.

“Enough!” the king roared, rising from his seat, his voice thick with irritation. Silence fell. He glowered at Arya through his thick beard. “Now, child, you will tell me what happened. Tell it all,and tell it true. It is a great crime to lie to a king.” Then he looked over at his son. “When she is done,you will have your turn. Until then, hold your tongue.”

As Arya began her story, Ned heard the door open behind him. He glanced back and saw Vayon Poole enter with Sansa. They stood quietly at the back of the hall as Arya spoke. When she got to the part where she threw Joffrey’s sword into the middle of the Trident, Renly Baratheon began to laugh.

The king bristled. “Ser Barristan, escort my brother from the hall before he chokes.”

Lord Renly stifled his laughter. “My brother is too kind. I can find the door myself.” He bowed to Joffrey. “Perchance later you’ll tell me how a nine-year-old girl the size of a wet rat managed to disarm you with a broom handle and throw your sword in the river.” As the door swung shut behind him, Ned heard him say, “Lion’s Tooth,” and guffaw once more.

Prince Joffrey was pale as he began his very different version of events. When his son was done talking, the king rose heavily from his seat, looking like a man who wanted to be anywhere but here.

“What in all the seven hells am I supposed to make of this? He says one thing, she says another.”

“They were not the only ones present,” Ned said. “Sansa, come here.” Ned had heard her version of the story the night Arya had vanished. He knew the truth. “Tell us what happened.”

His eldest daughter stepped forward hesitantly. She was dressed in blue velvets trimmed with white, a silver chain around her neck. Her thick auburn hair had been brushed until it shone. Sheblinked at her sister, then at the young prince. “I don’t know,” she said tearfully, looking as though she wanted to bolt. “I don’t remember. Everything happened so fast, I didn’t see …”

“You rotten!” Arya shrieked. She flew at her sister like an arrow, knocking Sansa down to the ground, pummeling her. “Liar, liar, liar, liar.”

“Arya, stop it!” Ned shouted. Jory pulled her off her sister, kicking. Sansa was pale and shaking as Ned lifted her back to her feet. “Are you hurt?” he asked, but she was staring at Arya, and she did not seem to hear.

“The girl is as wild as that filthy animal of hers,” Cersei Lannister said. “Robert, I want her punished.”

“Seven hells,” Robert swore. “Cersei, look at her. She’s a child. What would you have me do,whip her through the streets? Damn it, children fight. It’s over. No lasting harm was done.”

The queen was furious. “Joff will carry those scars for the rest of his life.”

Robert Baratheon looked at his eldest son. “So he will. Perhaps they will teach him a lesson. Ned,see that your daughter is disciplined. I will do the same with my son.”

“Gladly, Your Grace,” Ned said with vast relief.

Robert started to walk away, but the queen was not done. “And what of the direwolf?” she called after him. “What of the beast that savaged your son?”

The king stopped, turned back, frowned. “I’d forgotten about the damned wolf.”

Ned could see Arya tense in Jory’s arms. Jory spoke up quickly. “We found no trace of the direwolf, Your Grace.”

Robert did not look unhappy. “No? So be it.”

The queen raised her voice. “A hundred golden dragons to the man who brings me its skin!”

“A costly pelt,” Robert grumbled. “I want no part of this, woman. You can damn well buy your furs with Lannister gold.”

The queen regarded him coolly. “I had not thought you so niggardly. The king I’d thought to wed would have laid a wolfskin across my bed before the sun went down.”

Robert’s face darkened with anger. “That would be a fine trick, without a wolf.”

“We have a wolf,” Cersei Lannister said. Her voice was very quiet, but her green eyes shone with triumph.

It took them all a moment to comprehend her words, but when they did, the king shrugged irritably.

“As you will. Have Ser Ilyn see to it.”

“Robert, you cannot mean this,” Ned protested.

The king was in no mood for more argument. “Enough, Ned, I will hear no more. A direwolf is a savage beast. Sooner or later it would have turned on your girl the same way the other did on my son.Get her a dog, she’ll be happier for it.”

That was when Sansa finally seemed to comprehend. Her eyes were frightened as they went to her father. “He doesn’t mean Lady, does he?” She saw the truth on his face. “No,” she said. “No, not Lady, Lady didn’t bite anybody, she’s good …”

“Lady wasn’t there,” Arya shouted angrily. “You leave her alone!”

“Stop them,” Sansa pleaded, “don’t let them do it, please, please, it wasn’t Lady, it was Nymeria, Arya did it, you can’t, it wasn’t Lady, don’t let them hurt Lady, I’ll make her be good, I promise, I promise …” She started to cry.

All Ned could do was take her in his arms and hold her while she wept. He looked across the room at Robert. His old friend, closer than any brother. “Please, Robert. For the love you bear me. For the love you bore my sister. Please.”

The king looked at them for a long moment, then turned his eyes on his wife. “Damn you, Cersei,” he said with loathing.

Ned stood, gently disengaging himself from Sansa’s grasp. All the weariness of the past four days had returned to him. “Do it yourself then, Robert,” he said in a voice cold and sharp as steel. “At least have the courage to do it yourself.”

Robert looked at Ned with flat, dead eyes and left without a word, his footsteps heavy as lead.

Silence filled the hall.

“Where is the direwolf?” Cersei Lannister asked when her husband was gone. Beside her, Prince Joffrey was smiling.

“The beast is chained up outside the gatehouse, Your Grace,” Ser Barristan Selmy answered reluctantly.

“Send for Ilyn Payne.”

“No,” Ned said. “Jory, take the girls back to their rooms and bring me Ice.” The words tasted of bile in his throat, but he forced them out. “If it must be done, I will do it.”

Cersei Lannister regarded him suspiciously. “You, Stark? Is this some trick? Why would you do such a thing?”

They were all staring at him, but it was Sansa’s look that cut. “She is of the north. She deserves better than a butcher.”

He left the room with his eyes burning and his daughter’s wails echoing in his ears, and found thedirewolf pup where they chained her. Ned sat beside her for a while. “Lady,” he said, tasting the name. He had never paid much attention to the names the children had picked, but looking at her now,he knew that Sansa had chosen well. She was the smallest of the litter, the prettiest, the most gentle and trusting. She looked at him with bright golden eyes, and he ruffled her thick grey fur.

Shortly, Jory brought him Ice.

When it was over, he said, “Choose four men and have them take the body north. Bury her at Winterfell.”

“All that way?” Jory said, astonished.

“All that way,” Ned affirmed. “The Lannister woman shall never have this skin.”

He was walking back to the tower to give himself up to sleep at last when Sandor Clegane and his riders came pounding through the castle gate, back from their hunt.

There was something slung over the back of his destrier, a heavy shape wrapped in a bloody cloak.

“No sign of your daughter, Hand,” the Hound rasped down, “but the day was not wholly wasted. We got her little pet.” He reached back and shoved the burden off, and it fell with a thump in front of Ned.

Bending, Ned pulled back the cloak, dreading the words he would have to find for Arya, but it was not Nymeria after all. It was the butcher’s boy, Mycah, his body covered in dried blood. He had been cut almost in half from shoulder to waist by some terrible blow struck from above.

“You rode him down,” Ned said.

The Hound’s eyes seemed to glitter through the steel of that hideous dog’s-head helm. “He ran.” He looked at Ned’s face and laughed. “But not very fast.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well,Lady is dead,Nymeria has escaped,and Blanca was gone the moment They set off for King's Landing.But I promise that they will be back!


	10. The dagger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catelyn went to King's landing with a certain dagger after a number of events.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy！

Catelyn

 

Ned and the girls were days gone when Maester Luwin came to her one night in Bran’s sickroom, carrying a reading lamp and the books of account. “It is past time that we reviewed the figures, my lady,” he said. “You’ll want to know how much this royal visit cost us.”

Catelyn looked at Bran in his sick bed and brushed his hair back off his forehead. It had grown very long, she realized. She would have to cut it soon. “I have no need to look at figures, Maester Luwin,”

she told him, never taking her eyes from Bran. “I know what the visit cost us. Take the books away.”

“My lady, the king’s party had healthy appetites. We must replenish our stores before—”

She cut him off. “I said, take the books away. The steward will attend to our needs.”

“We have no steward,” Maester Luwin reminded her. Like a little grey rat, she thought, he would not let go. “Poole went south to establish Lord Eddard’s household at King’s Landing.”

Catelyn nodded absently. “Oh, yes. I remember.” Bran looked so pale. She wondered whether they might move his bed under the window, so he could get the morning sun.

Maester Luwin set the lamp in a niche by the door and fiddled with its wick. “There are several appointments that require your immediate attention, my lady. Besides the steward, we need a captain of the guards to fill Jory’s place, a new master of horse—”

Her eyes snapped around and found him. “A master of horse?” Her voice was a whip.

The maester was shaken. “Yes, my lady. Hullen rode south with Lord Eddard, so—”

“My son lies here broken and dying, Luwin, and you wish to discuss a new master of horse? Do you think I care what happens in the stables? Do you think it matters to me one whit? I would gladly butcher every horse in Winterfell with my own hands if it would open Bran’s eyes, do you understand that? Do you!”

He bowed his head. “Yes, my lady, but the appointments—”

“I’ll make the appointments,” Robb said.

Catelyn had not heard him enter, but there he stood in the doorway, looking at her. She had been shouting, she realized with a sudden flush of shame. What was happening to her? She was so tired,and her head hurt all the time.

Maester Luwin looked from Catelyn to her son. “I have prepared a list of those we might wish to consider for the vacant offices,” he said, offering Robb a paper plucked from his sleeve.

Her son glanced at the names. He had come from outside, Catelyn saw; his cheeks were red from the cold, his hair shaggy and wind blown. “Good men,” he said. “We’ll talk about them tomorrow.”

He handed back the list of names.

“Very good, my lord.” The paper vanished into his sleeve.

“Leave us now,” Robb said. Maester Luwin bowed and departed. Robb closed the door behind him and turned to her. He was wearing a sword, she saw. “Mother, what are you doing?”

Catelyn had always thought Robb looked like her; like Bran and Rickon and Sansa and Lyria, he had the Tully coloring, the auburn hair, the blue eyes. Yet now for the first time she saw something of Eddard Stark in his face, something as stern and hard as the north. “What am I doing?” she echoed, puzzled.

“How can you ask that? What do you imagine I’m doing? I am taking care of your brother. I am taking care of Bran.”

“Is that what you call it? You haven’t left this room since Bran was hurt. You didn’t even come to the gate when Father and the girls went south.”

“I said my farewells to them here, and watched them ride out from that window.” She had begged Ned not to go, not now, not after what had happened; everything had changed now, couldn’t he see that? It was no use. He had no choice, he had told her, and then he left, choosing. “I can’t leave him,even for a moment, not when any moment could be his last. I have to be with him, if … if …” She took her son’s limp hand, sliding his fingers through her own. He was so frail and thin, with no strength left in his hand, but she could still feel the warmth of life through his skin.

Robb’s voice softened. “He’s not going to die, Mother. Maester Luwin says the time of greatest danger has passed.”

“And what if Maester Luwin is wrong? What if Bran needs me and I’m not here?”

“Rickon needs you,” Robb said sharply. “He’s only three, he doesn’t understand what’s happening. He thinks everyone has deserted him, so he follows me around all day, clutching my leg and crying. I don’t know what to do with him.” He paused a moment, chewing on his lower lip the way he’d done when he was little. “Mother, I need you too. I’m trying but I can’t … I can’t do it all by myself.” His voice broke with sudden emotion, and Catelyn remembered that he was only fourteen. She wanted to get up and go to him, but Bran was still holding her hand and she could not move.

Outside the tower, a wolf began to howl. Catelyn trembled, just for a second.

“Bran’s.” Robb opened the window and let the night air into the stuffy tower room. The howling grew louder. It was a cold and lonely sound, full of melancholy and despair.

“Don’t,” she told him. “Bran needs to stay warm.”

“He needs to hear them sing,” Robb said. Somewhere out in Winterfell, a second wolf began to howl in chorus with the first. Then a third, closer. “Shaggydog and Grey Wind,” Robb said as their voices rose and fell together. “You can tell them apart if you listen close.”

Catelyn was shaking. It was the grief, the cold, the howling of the direwolves. Night after night, the howling and the cold wind and the grey empty castle, on and on they went, never changing, and her boy lying there broken, the sweetest of her children, the gentlest, Bran who loved to laugh and climb and dreamt of knighthood, all gone now, she would never hear him laugh again. Sobbing, she pulled her hand free of his and covered her ears against those terrible howls. “Make them stop!” she cried. “I can’t stand it, make them stop, make them stop, kill them all if you must, just make them stop!”

She didn’t remember falling to the floor, but there she was, and Robb was lifting her, holding her in strong arms. “Don’t be afraid, Mother. They would never hurt him.” He helped her to her narrow bed in the corner of the sickroom. “Close your eyes,” he said gently. “Rest. Maester Luwin tells me you’ve hardly slept since Bran’s fall.”

“I can’t,” she wept. “Gods forgive me, Robb, I can’t, what if he dies while I’m asleep, what if he dies, what if he dies …” The wolves were still howling. She screamed and held her ears again. “Oh,gods, close the window!”

“If you swear to me you’ll sleep.” Robb went to the window, but as he reached for the shutters another sound was added to the mournful howling of the direwolves. “Dogs,” he said, listening. “All the dogs are barking. They’ve never done that before …” Catelyn heard his breath catch in his throat.

When she looked up, his face was pale in the lamplight. “Fire,” he whispered.

Fire, she thought, and then, Bran! “Help me,” she said urgently, sitting up. “Help me with Bran.”

Robb did not seem to hear her. “The library tower’s on fire,” he said.

Catelyn could see the flickering reddish light through the open window now. She sagged with relief. Bran was safe. The library was across the bailey, there was no way the fire would reach them here. “Thank the gods,” she whispered.

Robb looked at her as if she’d gone mad. “Mother, stay here. I’ll come back as soon as the fire’s out.” He ran then. She heard him shout to the guards outside the room, heard them descending together in a wild rush, taking the stairs two and three at a time.

Outside, there were shouts of “Fire!” in the yard, screams, running footsteps, the whinny of frightened horses, and the frantic barking of the castle dogs. The howling was gone, she realized as she listened to the cacophony. The direwolves had fallen silent.

Catelyn said a silent prayer of thanks to the seven faces of god as she went to the window. Across the bailey, long tongues of flame shot from the windows of the library. She watched the smoke rise into the sky and thought sadly of all the books the Starks had gathered over the centuries. Then she closed the shutters.

When she turned away from the window, the man was in the room with her.

“You weren’t s’posed to be here,” he muttered sourly. “No one was s’posed to be here.”

He was a small, dirty man in filthy brown clothing, and he stank of horses. Catelyn knew all the men who worked in their stables, and he was none of them. He was gaunt, with limp blond hair and pale eyes deep-sunk in a bony face, and there was a dagger in his hand.

Catelyn looked at the knife, then at Bran. “No,” she said. The word stuck in her throat, the merest whisper.

He must have heard her. “It’s a mercy,” he said. “He’s dead already.”

“No,” Catelyn said, louder now as she found her voice again. “No, you can’t.” She spun back toward the window to scream for help, but the man moved faster than she would have believed. One hand clamped down over her mouth and yanked back her head, the other brought the dagger up to her windpipe. The stench of him was overwhelming.

She reached up with both hands and grabbed the blade with all her strength, pulling it away from her throat. She heard him cursing into her ear. Her fingers were slippery with blood, but she would not let go of the dagger. The hand over her mouth clenched more tightly, shutting off her air. Catelyn twisted her head to the side and managed to get a piece of his flesh between her teeth. She bit down hard into his palm. The man grunted in pain. She ground her teeth together and tore at him, and all ofa sudden he let go. The taste of his blood filled her mouth. She sucked in air and screamed, and he grabbed her hair and pulled her away from him, and she stumbled and went down, and then he was standing over her, breathing hard, shaking. The dagger was still clutched tightly in his right hand,slick with blood. “You weren’t s’posed to be here,” he repeated stupidly.

Catelyn saw the shadow slip through the open door behind him. There was a low rumble, less thana snarl, the merest whisper of a threat, but he must have heard something, because he started to turn just as the wolf made its leap. They went down together, half sprawled over Catelyn where she’d fallen. The wolf had him under the jaw. The man’s shriek lasted less than a second before the beast wrenched back its head, taking out half his throat.

His blood felt like warm rain as it sprayed across her face.

The wolf was looking at her. Its jaws were red and wet and its eyes glowed golden in the dark room. It was Bran’s wolf, she realized. Of course it was. “Thank you,” Catelyn whispered, her voice faint and tiny. She lifted her hand, trembling. The wolf padded closer, sniffed at her fingers, then licked at the blood with a wet rough tongue. When it had cleaned all the blood off her hand, it turned away silently and jumped up on Bran’s bed and lay down beside him. Catelyn began to laugh hysterically.

That was the way they found them, when Robb and Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrik burst in with half the guards in Winterfell. When the laughter finally died in her throat, they wrapped her in warm blankets and led her back to the Great Keep, to her own chambers. Old Nan undressed her and helped her into a scalding hot bath and washed the blood off her with a soft cloth.

Afterward Maester Luwin arrived to dress her wounds. The cuts in her fingers went deep, almost to the bone, and her scalp was raw and bleeding where he’d pulled out a handful of hair. The maester told her the pain was just starting now, and gave her milk of the poppy to help her sleep.

Finally she closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, they told her that she had slept four days. Catelyn nodded and sat up in bed. It all seemed like a nightmare to her now, everything since Bran’s fall, a terrible dream of blood and grief, but she had the pain in her hands to remind her that it was real. She felt weak and light-headed, yet strangely resolute, as if a great weight had lifted from her.

“Bring me some bread and honey,” she told her servants, “and take word to Maester Luwin that my bandages want changing.” They looked at her in surprise and ran to do her bidding.

Catelyn remembered the way she had been before, and she was ashamed. She had let them all down, her children, her husband, her House. It would not happen again. She would show these northerners how strong a Tully of Riverrun could be.

Robb arrived before her food. Rodrik Cassel came with him, and her husband’s ward Theon Greyjoy, and lastly Hallis Mollen, a muscular guardsman with a square brown beard. He was the new captain of the guard, Robb said. Her son was dressed in boiled leather and ringmail, she saw, and a sword hung at his waist.

“Who was he?” Catelyn asked them.

“No one knows his name,” Hallis Mollen told her. “He was no man of Winterfell, m’lady, but some says they seen him here and about the castle these past few weeks.”

“One of the king’s men, then,” she said, “or one of the Lannisters’. He could have waited behind when the others left.”

“Maybe,” Hal said. “With all these strangers filling up Winterfell of late, there’s no way of saying who he belonged to.”

“He’d been hiding in your stables,” Greyjoy said. “You could smell it on him.”

“And how could he go unnoticed?” she said sharply.

Hallis Mollen looked abashed. “Between the horses Lord Eddard took south and them we sent north to the Night’s Watch, the stalls were half-empty. It were no great trick to hide from the stableboys. Could be Hodor saw him, the talk is that boy’s been acting queer, but simple as he is …”

Hal shook his head.

“We found where he’d been sleeping,” Robb put in. “He had ninety silver stags in a leather bag buried beneath the straw.”

“It’s good to know my son’s life was not sold cheaply,” Catelyn said bitterly.

Hallis Mollen looked at her, confused. “Begging your grace, m’lady, you saying he was out to kill your boy?”

Greyjoy was doubtful. “That’s madness.”

“He came for Bran,” Catelyn said. “He kept muttering how I wasn’t supposed to be there. He set the library fire thinking I would rush to put it out, taking any guards with me. If I hadn’t been half-mad with grief, it would have worked.”

“Why would anyone want to kill Bran?” Robb said. “Gods, he’s only a little boy, helpless,sleeping …”

Catelyn gave her firstborn a challenging look. “If you are to rule in the north, you must think these things through, Robb. Answer your own question. Why would anyone want to kill a sleeping child?”

Before he could answer, the servants returned with a plate of food fresh from the kitchen. There was much more than she’d asked for: hot bread, butter and honey and blackberry preserves, a rasherof bacon and a soft-boiled egg, a wedge of cheese, a pot of mint tea. And with it came Maester Luwin.

“How is my son, Maester?” Catelyn looked at all the food and found she had no appetite.

Maester Luwin lowered his eyes. “Unchanged, my lady.”

It was the reply she had expected, no more and no less. Her hands throbbed with pain, as if the blade were still in her, cutting deep. She sent the servants away and looked back to Robb. “Do you have the answer yet?”

“Someone is afraid Bran might wake up,” Robb said, “afraid of what he might say or do, afraid of something he knows.”

Catelyn was proud of him. “Very good.” She turned to the new captain of the guard. “We must keep Bran safe. If there was one killer, there could be others.”

“How many guards do you want, m’lady?” Hal asked.

“So long as Lord Eddard is away, my son is the master of Winterfell,” she told him.

Robb stood a little taller. “Put one man in the sickroom, night and day, one outside the door, two at the bottom of the stairs. No one sees Bran without my warrant or my mother’s.”

“As you say, m’lord.”

“Do it now,” Catelyn suggested.

“And let his wolf stay in the room with him,” Robb added.

“Yes,” Catelyn said. And then again: “Yes.”

Hallis Mollen bowed and left the room.

“Lady Stark,” Ser Rodrik said when the guardsman had gone, “did you chance to notice the dagger the killer used?”

“The circumstances did not allow me to examine it closely, but I can vouch for its edge,” Catelyn replied with a dry smile. “Why do you ask?”

“We found the knife still in the villain’s grasp. It seemed to me that it was altogether too fine a weapon for such a man, so I looked at it long and hard. The blade is Valyrian steel, the hilt dragonbone. A weapon like that has no business being in the hands of such as him. Someone gave it to him.”

Catelyn nodded, thoughtful. “Robb, close the door.”

He looked at her strangely, but did as she told him.

“What I am about to tell you must not leave this room,” she told them. “I want your oaths on that.

If even part of what I suspect is true, Ned and my girls have ridden into deadly danger, and a word in the wrong ears could mean their lives.”

“Lord Eddard is a second father to me,” said Theon Greyjoy. “I do so swear.”

“You have my oath,” Maester Luwin said.

“And mine, my lady,” echoed Ser Rodrik.

She looked at her son. “And you, Robb?”

He nodded his consent.

“My sister Lysa believes the Lannisters murdered her husband, Lord Arryn, the Hand of the King,” Catelyn told them. “It comes to me that Jaime Lannister did not join the hunt the day Bran fell.

He remained here in the castle.” The room was deathly quiet. “I do not think Bran fell from thattower,” she said into the stillness. “I think he was thrown.”

The shock was plain on their faces. “My lady, that is a monstrous suggestion,” said Rodrik Cassel.“Even the Kingslayer would flinch at the murder of an innocent child.”

“Oh, would he?” Theon Greyjoy asked. “I wonder.”

“There is no limit to Lannister pride or Lannister ambition,” Catelyn said.

“The boy had always been surehanded in the past,” Maester Luwin said thoughtfully. “He knew every stone in Winterfell.”

“Gods,” Robb swore, his young face dark with anger. “If this is true, he will pay for it.” He drew his sword and waved it in the air. “I’ll kill him myself!”

Ser Rodrik bristled at him. “Put that away! The Lannisters are a hundred leagues away. Never draw your sword unless you mean to use it. How many times must I tell you, foolish boy?”

Abashed, Robb sheathed his sword, suddenly a child again. Catelyn said to Ser Rodrik, “I see my son is wearing steel now.”

The old master-at-arms said, “I thought it was time.”

Robb was looking at her anxiously. “Past time,” she said. “Winterfell may have need of all its swords soon, and they had best not be made of wood.”

Theon Greyjoy put a hand on the hilt of his blade and said, “My lady, if it comes to that, my House owes yours a great debt.”

Maester Luwin pulled at his chain collar where it chafed against his neck. “All we have is conjecture. This is the queen’s beloved brother we mean to accuse. She will not take it kindly. We must have proof, or forever keep silent.”

“Your proof is in the dagger,” Ser Rodrik said. “A fine blade like that will not have gone unnoticed.”

There was only one place to find the truth of it, Catelyn realized. “Someone must go to King’s Landing.”

“I’ll go,” Robb said.

“No,” she told him. “Your place is here. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.” She looked at Ser Rodrik with his great white whiskers, at Maester Luwin in his grey robes, at young Greyjoy,lean and dark and impetuous. Who to send? Who would be believed? Then she knew. Catelyn struggled to push back the blankets, her bandaged fingers as stiff and unyielding as stone. She climbed out of bed. “I must go myself.”

“My lady,” said Maester Luwin, “is that wise? Surely the Lannisters would greet your arrival with suspicion.”

“What about Bran?” Robb asked. The poor boy looked utterly confused now. “You can’t mean to leave him.”

“I have done everything I can for Bran,” she said, laying a wounded hand on his arm. “His life is in the hands of the gods and Maester Luwin. As you reminded me yourself, Robb, I have other children to think of now.”

“You will need a strong escort, my lady,” Theon said.

“I’ll send Hal with a squad of guardsmen,” Robb said.

“No,” Catelyn said. “A large party attracts unwelcome attention. I would not have the Lannisters know I am coming.”

Ser Rodrik protested. “My lady, let me accompany you at least. The kingsroad can be perilous for a woman alone.”

“I will not be taking the kingsroad,” Catelyn replied. She thought for a moment, then nodded her consent. “Two riders can move as fast as one, and a good deal faster than a long column burdened by wagons and wheel-houses. I will welcome your company, Ser Rodrik. We will follow the White Knife down to the sea, and hire a ship at White Harbor. Strong horses and brisk winds should bring usto King’s Landing well ahead of Ned and the Lannisters.” And then, she thought, we shall see what we shall see.  
❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅  
“We will make King’s Landing within the hour.”

Catelyn turned away from the rail and forced herself to smile. “Your oarmen have done well by us,Captain. Each one of them shall have a silver stag, as a token of my gratitude.”

Captain Moreo Tumitis favored her with a half bow. “You are far too generous, Lady Stark. The honor of carrying a great lady like yourself is all the reward they need.”

“But they’ll take the silver anyway.”

Moreo smiled. “As you say.” He spoke the Common Tongue fluently, with only the slightest hint of a Tyroshi accent. He’d been plying the narrow sea for thirty years, he’d told her, as oarman,quartermaster, and finally captain of his own trading galleys. The Storm Dancer was his fourth ship,and his fastest, a two-masted galley of sixty oars.

She had certainly been the fastest of the ships available in White Harbor when Catelyn and SerRodrik Cassel had arrived after their headlong gallop downriver. The Tyroshi were notorious for their avarice, and Ser Rodrik had argued for hiring a fishing sloop out of the Three Sisters, but Catelyn had insisted on the galley. It was good that she had. The winds had been against them much of the voyage,and without the galley’s oars they’d still be beating their way past the Fingers, instead of skimming toward King’s Landing and journey’s end.

So close, she thought. Beneath the linen bandages, her fingers still throbbed where the dagger had bitten. The pain was her scourge, Catelyn felt, lest she forget. She could not bend the last two fingers on her left hand, and the others would never again be dexterous. Yet that was a small enough price to pay for Bran’s life.

Ser Rodrik chose that moment to appear on deck. “My good friend,” said Moreo through his forked green beard. The Tyroshi loved bright colors, even in their facial hair. “It is so fine to see you looking better.”

“Yes,” Ser Rodrik agreed. “I haven’t wanted to die for almost two days now.” He bowed to Catelyn. “My lady.”

He was looking better. A shade thinner than he had been when they set out from White Harbor, but almost himself again. The strong winds in the Bite and the roughness of the narrow sea had not agreed with him, and he’d almost gone over the side when the storm seized them unexpectedly off Dragonstone, yet somehow he had clung to a rope until three of Moreo’s men could rescue him and carry him safely below decks.

“The captain was just telling me that our voyage is almost at an end,” she said.

Ser Rodrik managed a wry smile. “So soon?” He looked odd without his great white side whiskers;smaller somehow, less fierce, and ten years older. Yet back on the Bite it had seemed prudent to submit to a crewman’s razor, after his whiskers had become hopelessly befouled for the third time while he leaned over the rail and retched into the swirling winds.

“I will leave you to discuss your business,” Captain Moreo said. He bowed and took his leave of them.

The galley skimmed the water like a dragonfly, her oars rising and falling in perfect time. Ser Rodrik held the rail and looked out over the passing shore. “I have not been the most valiant of protectors.”

Catelyn touched his arm. “We are here, Ser Rodrik, and safely. That is all that truly matters.” Her hand groped beneath her cloak, her fingers stiff and fumbling. The dagger was still at her side. She found she had to touch it now and then, to reassure herself. “Now we must reach the king’s master-at-arms,and pray that he can be trusted.”

“Ser Aron Santagar is a vain man, but an honest one.” Ser Rodrik’s hand went to his face to stroke his whiskers and discovered once again that they were gone. He looked nonplussed. “He may know the blade, yes … but, my lady, the moment we go ashore we are at risk. And there are those at court who will know you on sight.”

Catelyn’s mouth grew tight. “Littlefinger,” she murmured. His face swam up before her; a boy’s face, though he was a boy no longer. His father had died several years before, so he was Lord Baelish now, yet still they called him Littlefinger. Her brother Edmure had given him that name, long ago at Riverrun. His family’s modest holdings were on the smallest of the Fingers, and Petyr had been slight and short for his age.

Ser Rodrik cleared his throat. “Lord Baelish once, ah …” His thought trailed off uncertainly insearch of the polite word.

Catelyn was past delicacy. “He was my father’s ward. We grew up together in Riverrun. I thought of him as a brother, but his feelings for me were … more than brotherly. When it was announced that I was to wed Brandon Stark, Petyr challenged for the right to my hand. It was madness. Brandon was twenty, Petyr scarcely fifteen. I had to beg Brandon to spare Petyr’s life. He let him off with a scar.

Afterward my father sent him away. I have not seen him since.” She lifted her face to the spray, as if the brisk wind could blow the memories away. “He wrote to me at Riverrun after Brandon was killed,but I burned the letter unread. By then I knew that Ned would marry me in his brother’s place.”

Ser Rodrik’s fingers fumbled once again for nonexistent whiskers. “Littlefinger sits on the small council now.”

“I knew he would rise high,” Catelyn said. “He was always clever, even as a boy, but it is one thing to be clever and another to be wise. I wonder what the years have done to him.”

High overhead, the far-eyes sang out from the rigging. Captain Moreo came scrambling across the deck, giving orders, and all around them the Storm Dancer burst into frenetic activity as King’s Landing slid into view atop its three high hills.

Three hundred years ago, Catelyn knew, those heights had been covered with forest, and only a handful of fisherfolk had lived on the north shore of the Blackwater Rush where that deep, swift river flowed into the sea. Then Aegon the Conqueror had sailed from Dragonstone. It was here that his army had put ashore, and there on the highest hill that he built his first crude redoubt of wood and earth.

Now the city covered the shore as far as Catelyn could see; manses and arbors and granaries, brick storehouses and timbered inns and merchant’s stalls, taverns and graveyards and brothels, all pile done on another. She could hear the clamor of the fish market even at this distance. Between the buildings were broad roads lined with trees, wandering crookback streets, and alleys so narrow that two men could not walk abreast. Visenya’s hill was crowned by the Great Sept of Baelor with itsseven crystal towers. Across the city on the hill of Rhaenys stood the blackened walls of the Dragonpit, its huge dome collapsing into ruin, its bronze doors closed now for a century. The Street ofthe Sisters ran between them, straight as an arrow. The city walls rose in the distance, high and strong.

A hundred quays lined the waterfront, and the harbor was crowded with ships. Deepwater fishingboats and river runners came and went, ferrymen poled back and forth across the Blackwater Rush,trading galleys unloaded goods from Braavos and Pentos and Lys. Catelyn spied the queen’s ornatebarge, tied up beside a fat-bellied whaler from the Port of Ibben, its hull black with tar, while uprivera dozen lean golden warships rested in their cribs, sails furled and cruel iron rams lapping at thewater.

And above it all, frowning down from Aegon’s high hill, was the Red Keep; seven huge drum-towers crowned with iron ramparts, an immense grim barbican, vaulted halls and covered bridges,barracks and dungeons and granaries, massive curtain walls studded with archers’ nests, all fashionedof pale red stone. Aegon the Conqueror had commanded it built. His son Maegor the Cruel had seen it completed. Afterward he had taken the heads of every stonemason, woodworker, and builder who had labored on it. Only the blood of the dragon would ever know the secrets of the fortress the Dragonlords had built, he vowed.

Yet now the banners that flew from its battlements were golden, not black, and where the three-headed dragon had once breathed fire, now pranced the crowned stag of House Baratheon.

A high-masted swan ship from the Summer Isles was beating out from port, its white sails huge with wind. The Storm Dancer moved past it, pulling steadily for shore.

“My lady,” Ser Rodrik said, “I have thought on how best to proceed while I lay abed. You must not enter the castle. I will go in your stead and bring Ser Aron to you in some safe place.”

She studied the old knight as the galley drew near to a pier. Moreo was shouting in the vulgarValyrian of the Free Cities. “You would be as much at risk as I would.”

Ser Rodrik smiled. “I think not. I looked at my reflection in the water earlier and scarcely recognized myself. My mother was the last person to see me without whiskers, and she is forty years dead. I believe I am safe enough, my lady.”

Moreo bellowed a command. As one, sixty oars lifted from the river, then reversed and backedwater. The galley slowed. Another shout. The oars slid back inside the hull. As they thumped againstthe dock, Tyroshi seamen leapt down to tie up. Moreo came bustling up, all smiles. “King’s Landing,my lady, as you did command, and never has a ship made a swifter or surer passage. Will you beneeding assistance to carry your things to the castle?”

“We shall not be going to the castle. Perhaps you can suggest an inn, someplace clean and comfortable and not too far from the river.”

The Tyroshi fingered his forked green beard. “Just so. I know of several establishments that might suit your needs. Yet first, if I may be so bold, there is the matter of the second half of the payment weagreed upon. And of course the extra silver you were so kind as to promise. Sixty stags, I believe it was.”

“For the oarmen,” Catelyn reminded him.

“Oh, of a certainty,” said Moreo. “Though perhaps I should hold it for them until we return toTyrosh. For the sake of their wives and children. If you give them the silver here, my lady, they will dice it away or spend it all for a night’s pleasure.”

“There are worse things to spend money on,” Ser Rodrik put in. “Winter is coming.”

“A man must make his own choices,” Catelyn said. “They earned the silver. How they spend it is no concern of mine.”

“As you say, my lady,” Moreo replied, bowing and smiling.

Just to be sure, Catelyn paid the oarmen herself, a stag to each man, and a copper to the two menwho carried their chests halfway up Visenya’s hill to the inn that Moreo had suggested. It was arambling old place on Eel Alley. The woman who owned it was a sour crone with a wandering eye who looked them over suspiciously and bit the coin that Catelyn offered her to make sure it was real.

Her rooms were large and airy, though, and Moreo swore that her fish stew was the most savory in all the Seven Kingdoms. Best of all, she had no interest in their names.

“I think it best if you stay away from the common room,” Ser Rodrik said, after they had settled in. “Even in a place like this, one never knows who may be watching.” He wore ringmail, dagger, andlongsword under a dark cloak with a hood he could pull up over his head. “I will be back before nightfall, with Ser Aron,” he promised. “Rest now, my lady.”

Catelyn was tired. The voyage had been long and fatiguing, and she was no longer as young as shehad been. Her windows opened on the alley and rooftops, with a view of the Blackwater beyond. She watched Ser Rodrik set off, striding briskly through the busy streets until he was lost in the crowds,then decided to take his advice. later She woke to a pounding on her door.

Catelyn sat up sharply. Outside the window, the rooftops of King’s Landing were red in the light ofthe setting sun. She had slept longer than she intended. A fist hammered at her door again, and a voice called out, “Open, in the name of the king.”

“A moment,” she called out. She wrapped herself in her cloak. The dagger was on the bedside table. She snatched it up before she unlatched the heavy wooden door.

The men who pushed into the room wore the black ringmail and golden cloaks of the City Watch.

Their leader smiled at the dagger in her hand and said, “No need for that, m’lady. We’re to escort you to the castle.”

“By whose authority?” she said.

He showed her a ribbon. Catelyn felt her breath catch in her throat. The seal was a mockingbird, in grey wax. “Petyr,” she said. So soon. Something must have happened to Ser Rodrik. She looked atthe head guardsman. “Do you know who I am?”

“No, m’lady,” he said. “M’lord Littlefinger said only to bring you to him, and see that you were not mistreated.”

Catelyn nodded. “You may wait outside while I dress.”

She bathed her hands in the basin and wrapped them in clean linen. Her fingers were thick and awkward as she struggled to lace up her bodice and knot a drab brown cloak about her neck. How could Littlefinger have known she was here? Ser Rodrik would never have told him. Old he might be,but he was stubborn, and loyal to a fault. Were they too late, had the Lannisters reached King’s Landing before her? No, if that were true, Ned would be here too, and surely he would have come to her. How …?

Then she thought, Moreo. The Tyroshi knew who they were and where they were, damn him. She hoped he’d gotten a good price for the information.

They had brought a horse for her. The lamps were being lit along the streets as they set out, and Catelyn felt the eyes of the city on her as she rode, surrounded by the guard in their golden cloaks.

When they reached the Red Keep, the portcullis was down and the great gates sealed for the night, butthe castle windows were alive with flickering lights. The guardsmen left their mounts outside the walls and escorted her through a narrow postern door, then up endless steps to a tower.

He was alone in the room, seated at a heavy wooden table, an oil lamp beside him as he wrote.

When they ushered her inside, he set down his pen and looked at her. “Cat,” he said quietly.

“Why have I been brought here in this fashion?”

He rose and gestured brusquely to the guards. “Leave us.” The men departed. “You were not mistreated, I trust,” he said after they had gone. “I gave firm instructions.” He noticed her bandages.

“Your hands …”

Catelyn ignored the implied question. “I am not accustomed to being summoned like a serving wench,” she said icily. “As a boy, you still knew the meaning of courtesy.”

“I’ve angered you, my lady. That was never my intent.” He looked contrite. The look brought back vivid memories for Catelyn. He had been a sly child, but after his mischiefs he always looked contrite; it was a gift he had. The years had not changed him much. Petyr had been a small boy, andhe had grown into a small man, an inch or two shorter than Catelyn, slender and quick, with the sharpfeatures she remembered and the same laughing grey-green eyes. He had a little pointed chin beardnow, and threads of silver in his dark hair, though he was still shy of thirty. They went well with the silver mockingbird that fastened his cloak. Even as a child, he had always loved his silver.

“How did you know I was in the city?” she asked him.

“Lord Varys knows all,” Petyr said with a sly smile. “He will be joining us shortly, but I wanted to see you alone first. It has been too long, Cat. How many years?”

Catelyn ignored his familiarity. There were more important questions. “So it was the King’s Spider who found me.”

Littlefinger winced. “You don’t want to call him that. He’s very sensitive. Comes of being an eunuch, I imagine. Nothing happens in this city without Varys knowing. Ofttimes he knows about it before it happens. He has informants everywhere. His little birds, he calls them. One of his little birdsheard about your visit. Thankfully, Varys came to me first.”

“Why you?”

He shrugged. “Why not me? I am master of coin, the king’s own councillor. Selmy and Lord Renly rode north to meet Robert, and Lord Stannis is gone to Dragonstone, leaving only Maester Pycelle and me. I was the obvious choice. I was ever a friend to your sister Lysa, Varys knows that.”

“Does Varys know about …”

“Lord Varys knows everything … except why you are here.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Why are you here?”

“A wife is allowed to yearn for her husband, and if a mother needs her daughters close, who can tell her no?”

Littlefinger laughed. “Oh, very good, my lady, but please don’t expect me to believe that. I know you too well. What were the Tully words again?”

Her throat was dry. “Family, Duty, Honor,” she recited stiffly. He did know her too well.

“Family, Duty, Honor,” he echoed. “All of which required you to remain in Winterfell, where our Hand left you. No, my lady, something has happened. This sudden trip of yours bespeaks a certain urgency. I beg of you, let me help. Old sweet friends should never hesitate to rely upon each other.”

There was a soft knock on the door. “Enter,” Littlefinger called out.

The man who stepped through the door was plump, perfumed, powdered, and as hairless as an egg.

He wore a vest of woven gold thread over a loose gown of purple silk, and on his feet were pointedslippers of soft velvet. “Lady Stark,” he said, taking her hand in both of his, “to see you again after so many years is such a joy.” His flesh was soft and moist, and his breath smelled of lilacs. “Oh, your poor hands. Have you burned yourself, sweet lady? The fingers are so delicate … Our good Maester Pycelle makes a marvelous salve, shall I send for a jar?”

Catelyn slid her fingers from his grasp. “I thank you, my lord, but my own Maester Luwin has already seen to my hurts.”

Varys bobbed his head. “I was grievous sad to hear about your son. And him so young. The gods are cruel.”

“On that we agree, Lord Varys,” she said. The title was but a courtesy due him as a council member; Varys was lord of nothing but the spiderweb, the master of none but his whisperers.

The eunuch spread his soft hands. “On more than that, I hope, sweet lady. I have great esteem for your husband, our new Hand, and I know we do both love King Robert.”

“Yes,” she was forced to say. “For a certainty.”

“Never has a king been so beloved as our Robert,” quipped Littlefinger. He smiled slyly. “At least in Lord Varys’s hearing.”

“Good lady,” Varys said with great solicitude. “There are men in the Free Cities with wondrous healing powers. Say only the word, and I will send for one for your dear Bran.”

“Maester Luwin is doing all that can be done for Bran,” she told him. She would not speak of Bran, not here, not with these men. She trusted Littlefinger only a little, and Varys not at all. She would not let them see her grief. “Lord Baelish tells me that I have you to thank for bringing me here.”

Varys giggled like a little girl. “Oh, yes. I suppose I am guilty. I hope you forgive me, kind lady.”

He eased himself down into a seat and put his hands together. “I wonder if we might trouble you to show us the dagger?”

Catelyn Stark stared at the eunuch in stunned disbelief. He was a spider, she thought wildly, anenchanter or worse. He knew things no one could possibly know, unless … “What have you done to Ser Rodrik?” she demanded.

Littlefinger was lost. “I feel rather like the knight who arrives at the battle without his lance. What dagger are we talking about? Who is Ser Rodrik?”

“Ser Rodrik Cassel is master-at-arms at Winterfell,” Varys informed him. “I assure you, LadyStark, nothing at all has been done to the good knight. He did call here early this afternoon. He visited with Ser Aron Santagar in the armory, and they talked of a certain dagger. About sunset, they left the castle together and walked to that dreadful hovel where you were staying. They are still there,drinking in the common room, waiting for your return. Ser Rodrik was very distressed to find you gone.”

“How could you know all that?”

“The whisperings of little birds,” Varys said, smiling. “I know things, sweet lady. That is the nature of my service.” He shrugged. “You do have the dagger with you, yes?”

Catelyn pulled it out from beneath her cloak and threw it down on the table in front of him. “Here.

Perhaps your little birds will whisper the name of the man it belongs to.”

Varys lifted the knife with exaggerated delicacy and ran a thumb along its edge. Blood welled, and he let out a squeal and dropped the dagger back on the table.

“Careful,” Catelyn told him, “it’s sharp.”

“Nothing holds an edge like Valyrian steel,” Littlefinger said as Varys sucked at his bleeding thumb and looked at Catelyn with sullen admonition. Littlefinger hefted the knife lightly in his hand,testing the grip. He flipped it in the air, caught it again with his other hand. “Such sweet balance. You want to find the owner, is that the reason for this visit? You have no need of Ser Aron for that, my lady. You should have come to me.”

“And if I had,” she said, “what would you have told me?”

“I would have told you that there was only one knife like this at King’s Landing.” He grasped the blade between thumb and forefinger, drew it back over his shoulder, and threw it across the room with a practiced flick of his wrist. It struck the door and buried itself deep in the oak, quivering. “It’s mine.”

“Yours?” It made no sense. Petyr had not been at Winterfell.

“Until the tourney on Prince Joffrey’s name day,” he said, crossing the room to wrench the dagger from the wood. “I backed Ser Jaime in the jousting, along with half the court.” Petyr’s sheepish grin made him look half a boy again. “When Loras Tyrell unhorsed him, many of us became a trifle poorer. Ser Jaime lost a hundred golden dragons, the queen lost an emerald pendant, and I lost my knife. Her Grace got the emerald back, but the winner kept the rest.”  
“who?”Catelyn asked.  
“The Imp，”answers littlefinger.“Tyrion Lannister.”


	11. The waterdance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya's chapter! Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is short, but I promise that there will be some Lyria's POVs, and Jamie's too!

Arya

 

Arya hates King's landing,she hates the queen,she hates Joffrey. How dare they?How dare they kill the innocent Lady? She must drive Nymeria away because them, Blanca was gone the moment she sees them.

"Focus,Arya, you are not paying attention to your stitches,look at them!" 

Septa Mordane towers at her, and Arya saws what she means to say,do you want to ashame us all? 

Arya stares back, anger rises, why should she care about the little princess Mycella and her stupid friends? 

Septa Mordane was still mumbling about her stitches when she cannot stand it anymore.When the septa was walking to Sansa, she runs to the balcony,and jumps down from it.

She landed in a pile of leaves, before she quickly hid in the bushes.She saw that Lyria is sparring with a youth, with curly brown hair.

There's a crowd of people around them, the only people she has met before were Ser Jamie and Lord Renly, the Lord of Storm's end. She follows their movements passionately, fully unaware of a pair of dark eyes looking at her thoughtfully in the Tower of the Hand…

 

❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅

Three days later, at midday, her father’s steward Vayon Poole sent Arya to the Small Hall. The trestle tables had been dismantled and the benches shoved against the walls. The hall seemed empty,until an unfamiliar voice said, “You are late, boy.” A slight man with a bald head and a great beak ofa nose stepped out of the shadows, holding a pair of slender wooden swords. 

“Tomorrow you will be here at midday,” He had an accent, the lilt of the Free Cities, Braavos perhaps, or Myr.

“Who are you?” Arya asked.

“I am your dancing master.” He tossed her one of the wooden blades. She grabbed for it, missed,and heard it clatter to the floor. “Tomorrow you will catch it. Now pick it up.”

It was not just a stick, but a true wooden sword complete with grip and guard and pommel. Arya picked it up and clutched it nervously with both hands, holding it out in front of her. It was heavier than it looked, much heavier than Needle.

The bald man clicked his teeth together. “That is not the way, boy. This is not a greatsword that is needing two hands to swing it. You will take the blade in one hand.”

“It’s too heavy,” Arya said.

“It is heavy as it needs to be to make you strong, and for the balancing. A hollow inside is filled with lead, just so. One hand now is all that is needing.”

Arya took her right hand off the grip and wiped her sweaty palm on her pants. She held the sword in her left hand. He seemed to approve. “The left is good. All is reversed, it will make your enemies more awkward. Now you are standing wrong. Turn your body sideface, yes, so. You are skinny as the shaft of a spear, do you know. That is good too, the target is smaller. Now the grip. Let me see.” He moved closer and peered at her hand, prying her fingers apart, rearranging them. “Just so, yes. Do not squeeze it so tight, no, the grip must be deft, delicate.”

“What if I drop it?” Arya said.

“The steel must be part of your arm,” the bald man told her. “Can you drop part of your arm? No. Nine years Syrio Forel was first sword to the Sealord of Braavos, he knows these things. Listen to him, boy.”

It was the third time he had called her “boy.” “I’m a girl,” Arya objected.

“Boy, girl,” Syrio Forel said. “You are a sword, that is all.” He clicked his teeth together. “Just so,that is the grip. You are not holding a battle-axe, you are holding a—”

“—needle,” Arya finished for him, fiercely.

“Just so. Now we will begin the dance. Remember, child, this is not the iron dance of Westeros we are learning, the knight’s dance, hacking and hammering, no. This is the bravo’s dance, the water dance, swift and sudden. All men are made of water, do you know this? When you pierce them, the water leaks out and they die.” He took a step backward, raised his own wooden blade. “Now you will try to strike me.”

Arya tried to strike him. She tried for four hours, until every muscle in her body was sore and aching, while Syrio Forel clicked his teeth together and told her what to do.

The next day their real work began.


	12. The capture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyrion had been captured by Catelyn

Tyrion

 

Tyrion Lannister was caught, caught by Catelyn Stark, when he was buying dinner in a small lodge.

They set out through the rain at a hard gallop, and before long Tyrion’s thighs were cramped andaching and his butt throbbed with pain. Even when they were safely away from the inn, and Catelyn Stark slowed them to a trot, it was a miserable pounding journey over rough ground, made worse byhis blindness. Every twist and turn put him in danger of falling off his horse. The hood muffled sound,so he could not make out what was being said around him, and the rain soaked through the cloth andmade it cling to his face, until even breathing was a struggle. The rope chafed his wrists raw and seemed to grow tighter as the night wore on. I was about to settle down to a warm fire and a roast fowl, and that wretched singer had to open his mouth, he thought mournfully. The wretched singerhad come along with them. “There is a great song to be made from this, and I’m the one to make it,”

The rain had finally stopped and dawn light was seeping through the wet cloth over his eyes when Catelyn Stark gave the command to dismount. Rough hands pulled him down from his horse, untiedhis wrists, and yanked the hood off his head. When he saw the narrow stony road, the foothills rising high and wild all around them, and the jagged snowcapped peaks on the distant horizon, all the hopewent out of him in a rush. “This is the high road,” he gasped, looking at Lady Stark with accusation.

“The eastern road. You said we were riding for Winterfell!”

Catelyn Stark favored him with the faintest of smiles. “Often and loudly,” she agreed. “No doubt your friends will ride that way when they come after us. I wish them good speed.”

Even now, long days later, the memory filled him with a bitter rage. All his life Tyrion had prided himself on his cunning, the only gift the gods had seen fit to give him, and yet this seven-times damned she-wolf Catelyn Stark had outwitted him at every turn. The knowledge was more galling than the bare fact of his abduction.

They stopped only as long as it took to feed and water the horses, and then they were off again.

This time Tyrion was spared the hood. After the second night they no longer bound his hands, andonce they had gained the heights they scarcely bothered to guard him at all. It seemed they did notfear his escape. And why should they? Up here the land was harsh and wild, and the high road littlemore than a stony track. If he did run, how far could he hope to go, alone and without provisions? Theshadowcats would make a morsel of him, and the clans that dwelt in the mountain fastnesses werebrigands and murderers who bowed to no law but the sword.

Yet still the Stark woman drove them forward relentlessly. He knew where they were bound. He had known it since the moment they pulled off his hood. These mountains were the domain of House Arryn, and the late Hand’s widow was a Tully, Catelyn Stark’s sister … and no friend to the Lannisters. Tyrion had known the Lady Lysa slightly during her years at King’s Landing, and did not look forward to renewing the acquaintance.

His captors were clustered around a stream a short ways down the high road. The horses had drunktheir fill of the icy cold water, and were grazing on clumps of brown grass that grew from clefts in therock. Jyck and Morrec huddled close, sullen and miserable. Mohor stood over them, leaning on hisspear and wearing a rounded iron cap that made him look as if he had a bowl on his head. Nearby,Marillion the singer sat oiling his wood harp, complaining of what the damp was doing to his strings.

“We must have some rest, my lady,” the hedge knight Ser Willis Wode was saying to CatelynStark as Tyrion approached. He was Lady Whent’s man, stiff-necked and stolid, and the first to rise toaid Catelyn Stark back at the inn.

“Ser Willis speaks truly, my lady,” Ser Rodrik said. “This is the third horse we have lost—”

“We will lose more than horses if we’re overtaken by the Lannisters,” she reminded them. Herface was windburnt and gaunt, but it had lost none of its determination.

“Small chance of that here,” Tyrion put in.

“The lady did not ask your views, dwarf,” snapped Kurleket, a great fat oaf with short-croppedhair and a pig’s face. He was one of the Brackens, a man-at-arms in the service of Lord Jonos. Tyrionhad made a special effort to learn all their names, so he might thank them later for their tendertreatment of him. A Lannister always paid his debts. Kurleket would learn that someday, as would hisfriends Lharys and Mohor, and the good Ser Willis, and the sellswords Bronn and Chiggen. Heplanned an especially sharp lesson for Marillion, him of the woodharp and the sweet tenor voice, whowas struggling so manfully to rhyme imp with gimp and limp so he could make a song of this outrage.

“Let him speak,” Lady Stark commanded.

Tyrion Lannister seated himself on a rock. “By now our pursuit is likely racing across the Neck,chasing your lie up the kingsroad … assuming there is a pursuit, which is by no means certain. Oh, nodoubt the word has reached my father … but my father does not love me overmuch, and I am not atall sure that he will bother to bestir himself.” It was only half a lie; Lord Tywin Lannister cared not afig for his deformed son, but he tolerated no slights on the honor of his House. “This is a cruel land,Lady Stark. You’ll find no succor until you reach the Vale, and each mount you lose burdens the others all the more. Worse, you risk losing me. I am small, and not strong, and if I die, then what’sthe point?” That was no lie at all; Tyrion did not know how much longer he could endure this pace.

“It might be said that your death is the point, Lannister,” Catelyn Stark replied.

“I think not,” Tyrion said. “If you wanted me dead, you had only to say the word, and one of thesestaunch friends of yours would gladly have given me a red smile.” He looked at Kurleket, but the manwas too dim to taste the mockery.

“The Starks do not murder men in their beds.”

“Nor do I,” he said. “I tell you again, I had no part in the attempt to kill your son.”

“The assassin was armed with your dagger.”

Tyrion felt the heat rise in him. “It was not my dagger,” he insisted. “How many times must I swearto that? Lady Stark, whatever you may believe of me, I am not a stupid man. Only a fool would arm acommon footpad with his own blade.”

Just for a moment, he thought he saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes, but what she said was, “Whywould Petyr lie to me?”

“Why does a bear shit in the woods?” he demanded. “Because it is his nature. Lying comes aseasily as breathing to a man like Littlefinger. You ought to know that, you of all people.”

She took a step toward him, her face tight. “And what does that mean, Lannister?”

Tyrion cocked his head. “Why, every man at court has heard him tell how he took yourmaidenhead, my lady.”

“That is a lie!” Catelyn Stark said.

“Oh, wicked little imp,” Marillion said, shocked.

Kurleket drew his dirk, a vicious piece of black iron. “At your word, m’lady, I’ll toss his lyingtongue at your feet.” His pig eyes were wet with excitement at the prospect.

Catelyn Stark stared at Tyrion with a coldness on her face such as he had never seen. “PetyrBaelish loved me once. He was only a boy. His passion was a tragedy for all of us, but it was real, andpure, and nothing to be made mock of. He wanted my hand. That is the truth of the matter. You aretruly an evil man, Lannister.”

“And you are truly a fool, Lady Stark. Littlefinger has never loved anyone but Littlefinger, and Ipromise you that it is not your hand that he boasts of, it’s those ripe breasts of yours, and that sweetmouth, and the heat between your legs.”

Kurleket grabbed a handful of hair and yanked his head back in a hard jerk, baring his throat.

Tyrion felt the cold kiss of steel beneath his chin. “Shall I bleed him, my lady?”

“Kill me and the truth dies with me,” Tyrion gasped.

“Let him talk,” Catelyn Stark commanded.

Kurleket let go of Tyrion’s hair, reluctantly.

Tyrion took a deep breath. “How did Littlefinger tell you I came by this dagger of his? Answer methat.”

“You won it from him in a wager, during the tourney on Prince Joffrey’s name day.”

“When my brother Jaime was unhorsed by the Knight of Flowers, that was his story, no?”

“It was,” she admitted. A line creased her brow.

“Riders!”

The shriek came from the wind-carved ridge above them. Ser Rodrik had sent Lharys scramblingup the rock face to watch the road while they took their rest.

For a long second, no one moved. Catelyn Stark was the first to react. “Ser Rodrik, Ser Willis, tohorse,” she shouted. “Get the other mounts behind us. Mohor, guard the prisoners—”

“Arm us!” Tyrion sprang to his feet and seized her by the arm. “You will need every sword.”

She knew he was right, Tyrion could see it. The mountain clans cared nothing for the enmities of the great houses; they would slaughter Stark and Lannister with equal fervor, as they slaughtered eachother. They might spare Catelyn herself; she was still young enough to bear sons. Still, she hesitated.

“I hear them!” Ser Rodrik called out. Tyrion turned his head to listen, and there it was: hoofbeats,a dozen horses or more, coming nearer. Suddenly everyone was moving, reaching for weapons,running to their mounts.

Pebbles rained down around them as Lharys came springing and sliding down the ridge. He landed breathless in front of Catelyn Stark, an ungainly-looking man with wild tufts of rust-colored hair sticking out from under a conical steel cap. “Twenty men, maybe twenty-five,” he said, breathless.

“Milk Snakes or Moon Brothers, by my guess. They must have eyes out, m’lady … hidden watchers … they know we’re here.”

Ser Rodrik Cassel was already ahorse, a longsword in hand. Mohor crouched behind a boulder,both hands on his iron-tipped spear, a dagger between his teeth. “You, singer,” Ser Willis Wode called out. “Help me with this breastplate.” Marillion sat frozen, clutching his wood harp, his face as pale as milk, but Tyrion’s man Morrec bounded quickly to his feet and moved to help the knight with his armor.

Tyrion kept his grip on Catelyn Stark. “You have no choice,” he told her. “Three of us, and a fourthman wasted guarding us … four men can be the difference between life and death up here.”

“Give me your word that you will put down your swords again after the fight is done.”

“My word?” The hoofbeats were louder now. Tyrion grinned crookedly. “Oh, that you have, my lady … on my honor as a Lannister.”

For a moment he thought she would spit at him, but instead she snapped, “Arm them,” and as quick as that she was pulling away. Ser Rodrik tossed Jyck his sword and scabbard, and wheeled to meet the foe. Morrec helped himself to a bow and quiver, and went to one knee beside the road. He was a better archer than swordsman. And Bronn rode up to offer Tyrion a double-bladed axe.

“I have never fought with an axe.” The weapon felt awkward and unfamiliar in his hands. It had a short haft, a heavy head, a nasty spike on top.

“Pretend you’re splitting logs,” Bronn said, drawing his longsword from the scabbard across his back. He spat, and trotted off to form up beside Chiggen and Ser Rodrik. Ser Willis mounted up tojoin them, fumbling with his helmet, a metal pot with a thin slit for his eyes and a long black silkplume.

“Logs don’t bleed,” Tyrion said to no one in particular. He felt naked without armor. He looked around for a rock and ran over to where Marillion was hiding. “Move over.”

“Go away!” the boy screamed back at him. “I’m a singer, I want no part of this fight!”

“What, lost your taste for adventure?” Tyrion kicked at the youth until he slid over, and not amoment too soon. A heartbeat later, the riders were on them.

There were no heralds, no banners, no horns nor drums, only the twang of bowstrings as Morrecand Lharys let fly, and suddenly the clansmen came thundering out of the dawn, lean dark men inboiled leather and mismatched armor, faces hidden behind barred half helms. In gloved hands were clutched all manner of weapons: longswords and lances and sharpened scythes, spiked clubs and daggers and heavy iron mauls. At their head rode a big man in a striped shadowskin cloak, armed with a two-handed greatsword.

Ser Rodrik shouted “Winterfell!” and rode to meet him, with Bronn and Chiggen beside him,screaming some wordless battle cry. Ser Willis Wode followed, swinging a spiked morning star around his head. “Harrenhal! Harrenhal!” he sang. Tyrion felt a sudden urge to leap up, brandish his axe, and boom out, “Casterly Rock!” but the insanity passed quickly and he crouched down lower.

He heard the screams of frightened horses and the crash of metal on metal. Chiggen’s sword raked across the naked face of a mailed rider, and Bronn plunged through the clansmen like a whirlwind,cutting down foes right and left. Ser Rodrik hammered at the big man in the shadowskin cloak, their horses dancing round each other as they traded blow for blow. Jyck vaulted onto a horse and galloped bareback into the fray. Tyrion saw an arrow sprout from the throat of the man in the shadowskin cloak. When he opened his mouth to scream, only blood came out. By the time he fell, Ser Rodrik was fighting someone else.

Suddenly Marillion shrieked, covering his head with his woodharp as a horse leapt over their rock.

Tyrion scrambled to his feet as the rider turned to come back at them, hefting a spiked maul. Tyrion swung his axe with both hands. The blade caught the charging horse in the throat with a meaty thunk,angling upward, and Tyrion almost lost his grip as the animal screamed and collapsed. He managed towrench the axe free and lurch clumsily out of the way. Marillion was less fortunate. Horse and ridercrashed to the ground in a tangle on top of the singer. Tyrion danced back in while the brigand’s leg was still pinned beneath his fallen mount, and buried the axe in the man’s neck, just above the shoulder blades.

As he struggled to yank the blade loose, he heard Marillion moaning under the bodies. “Someone help me,” the singer gasped. “Gods have mercy, I’m bleeding.”

“I believe that’s horse blood,” Tyrion said. The singer’s hand came crawling out from beneath the dead animal, scrabbling in the dirt like a spider with five legs. Tyrion put his heel on the grasping fingers and felt a satisfying crunch. “Close your eyes and pretend you’re dead,” he advised the singer before he hefted the axe and turned away.

After that, things ran together. The dawn was full of shouts and screams and heavy with the scent of blood, and the world had turned to chaos. Arrows hissed past his ear and clattered off the rocks. Hesaw Bronn unhorsed, fighting with a sword in each hand. Tyrion kept on the fringes of the fight,sliding from rock to rock and darting out of the shadows to hew at the legs of passing horses. He found a wounded clansman and left him dead, helping himself to the man’s halfhelm. It fit too snugly,but Tyrion was glad of any protection at all. Jyck was cut down from behind while he sliced at a man in front of him, and later Tyrion stumbled over Kurleket’s body. The pig face had been smashed inwith a mace, but Tyrion recognized the dirk as he plucked it from the man’s dead fingers. He was sliding it through his belt when he heard a woman’s scream.

Catelyn Stark was trapped against the stone face of the mountain with three men around her, one still mounted and the other two on foot. She had a dagger clutched awkwardly in her maimed hands,but her back was to the rock now and they had penned her on three sides. Let them have the bitch,Tyrion thought, and welcome to her, yet somehow he was moving. He caught the first man in theback of the knee before they even knew he was there, and the heavy axehead split flesh and bone like rotten wood. Logs that bleed, Tyrion thought inanely as the second man came for him. Tyrion ducked under his sword, lashed out with the axe, the man reeled backward … and Catelyn Stark stepped upbehind him and opened his throat. The horseman remembered an urgent engagement elsewhere and galloped off suddenly.

Tyrion looked around. The enemy were all vanquished or vanished. Somehow the fighting had ended when he wasn’t looking. Dying horses and wounded men lay all around, screaming or moaning. To his vast astonishment, he was not one of them. He opened his fingers and let the axe thunk to the ground. His hands were sticky with blood. He could have sworn they had been fighting for half a day, but the sun seemed scarcely to have moved at all.

“Your first battle?” Bronn asked later as he bent over Jyck’s body, pulling off his boots. Theywere good boots, as befit one of Lord Tywin’s men; heavy leather, oiled and supple, much finer thanwhat Bronn was wearing.

Tyrion nodded. “My father will be so proud,” he said. His legs were cramping so badly he could scarcely stand. Odd, he had never once noticed the pain during the battle.

“You need a woman now,” Bronn said with a glint in his black eyes. He shoved the boots into his saddlebag. “Nothing like a woman after a man’s been blooded, take my word.”

Chiggen stopped looting the corpses of the brigands long enough to snort and lick his lips.

Tyrion glanced over to where Lady Stark was dressing Ser Rodrik’s wounds. “I’m willing if she is,” he said. The freeriders broke into laughter, and Tyrion grinned and thought, There’s a start.

Afterward he knelt by the stream and washed the blood off his face in water cold as ice. As he limped back to the others, he glanced again at the slain. The dead clansmen were thin, ragged men,their horses scrawny and undersized, with every rib showing. What weapons Bronn and Chiggen had left them were none too impressive. Mauls, clubs, a scythe … He remembered the big man in the shadowskin cloak who had dueled Ser Rodrik with a two-handed greatsword, but when he found his corpse sprawled on the stony ground, the man was not so big after all, the cloak was gone, and Tyrion saw that the blade was badly notched, its cheap steel spotted with rust. Small wonder the clansmen had left nine bodies on the ground.

They had only three dead; two of Lord Bracken’s men-at-arms, Kurleket and Mohor, and his own man Jyck, who had made such a bold show with his bareback charge. A fool to the end, Tyrion thought.

“Lady Stark, I urge you to press on, with all haste,” Ser Willis Wode said, his eyes scanning the ridge tops warily through the slit in his helm. “We drove them off for the moment, but they will not have gone far.”

“We must bury our dead, Ser Willis,” she said. “These were brave men. I will not leave them to the crows and shadowcats.”

“This soil is too stony for digging,” Ser Willis said.

“Then we shall gather stones for cairns.”

“Gather all the stones you want,” Bronn told her, “but do it without me or Chiggen. I’ve better things to do than pile rocks on dead men … breathing, for one.” He looked over the rest of the survivors. “Any of you who hope to be alive come nightfall, ride with us.”

but do it without me or Chiggen. I’ve betterthings to do than pile rocks on dead men … breathing, for one.” He looked over the rest of thesurvivors. “Any of you who hope to be alive come nightfall, ride with us.”

“My lady, I fear he speaks the truth,” Ser Rodrik said wearily. The old knight had been wounded in the fight, a deep gash in his left arm and a spear thrust that grazed his neck, and he sounded his age.

“If we linger here, they will be on us again for a certainty, and we may not live through a second attack.”

Tyrion could see the anger in Catelyn’s face, but she had no choice. “May the gods forgive us,then. We will ride at once.”

There was no shortage of horses now. Tyrion moved his saddle to Jyck’s spotted gelding, who looked strong enough to last another three or four days at least. He was about to mount when Lharys stepped up and said, “I’ll take that dirk now, dwarf.”

“Let him keep it.” Catelyn Stark looked down from her horse. “And see that he has his axe backas well. We may have need of it if we are attacked again.”

“You have my thanks, my lady,” Tyrion said, mounting up.

“Save them,” she said curtly. “I trust you no more than I did before.” She was gone before he could frame a reply.

Tyrion adjusted his stolen helm and took the axe from Bronn. He remembered how he had begun the journey, with his wrists bound and a hood pulled down over his head, and decided that this was a definite improvement. Lady Stark could keep her trust; so long as he could keep the axe, he would count himself ahead in the game.

Ser Willis Wode led them out. Bronn took the rear, with Lady Stark safely in the middle, Ser Rodrik a shadow beside her. Marillion kept throwing sullen looks back at Tyrion as they rode. The singer had broken several ribs, his woodharp, and all four fingers on his playing hand, yet the day had not been an utter loss to him; somewhere he had acquired a magnificent shadowskin cloak, thick black fur slashed by stripes of white. He huddled beneath its folds silently, and for once had nothing to say.

They heard the deep growls of shadowcats behind them before they had gone half a mile, and later the wild snarling of the beasts fighting over the corpses they had left behind. Marillion grew visibly pale. Tyrion trotted up beside him. “Craven,” he said, “rhymes nicely with raven.” He kicked his horse and moved past the singer, up to Ser Rodrik and Catelyn Stark.

She looked at him, lips pressed tightly together.

“As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted,” Tyrion began, “there is a serious flaw in Littlefinger’s fable. Whatever you may believe of me, Lady Stark, I promise you this—I never bet against my family.”

 

chapter14

艾


	13. The whispers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya heard the talks

Arya

 

Arya had been chasing a cat when she heard noises. The scrape of boots, the distant sound of voices.

A flickering light brushed the wall ever so faintly, and she saw that she stood at the top of a greatblack well, a shaft twenty feet across plunging deep into the earth. Huge stones had been set into thecurving walls as steps, circling down and down, dark as the steps to hell that Old Nan used to tellthem of. And something was coming up out of the darkness, out of the bowels of the earth …Arya peered over the edge and felt the cold black breath on her face. Far below, she saw the light ofa single torch, small as the flame of a candle. Two men, she made out. Their shadows writhed against the sides of the well, tall as giants. She could hear their voices, echoing up the shaft.

“… found one bastard,” one said. “The rest will come soon. A day, two days, a fortnight …”

“And when he learns the truth, what will he do?” a second voice asked in the liquid accents of theFree Cities.

“The gods alone know,” the first voice said. Arya could see a wisp of grey smoke drifting up offthe torch, writhing like a snake as it rose. “The fools tried to kill his son, and what’s worse, they madea mummer’s farce of it. He’s not a man to put that aside. I warn you, the wolf and lion will soon be ateach other’s throats, whether we will it or no.”

“Too soon, too soon,” the voice with the accent complained. “What good is war now? We are not ready. Delay.”

“As well bid me stop time. Do you take me for a wizard?”

The other chuckled. “No less.” Flames licked at the cold air. The tall shadows were almost on topof her. An instant later the man holding the torch climbed into her sight, his companion beside him.

Arya crept back away from the well, dropped to her stomach, and flattened herself against the wall.

She held her breath as the men reached the top of the steps.

“What would you have me do?” asked the torchbearer, a stout man in a leather half cape. Even inheavy boots, his feet seemed to glide soundlessly over the ground. A round scarred face and a stubbleof dark beard showed under his steel cap, and he wore mail over boiled leather, and a dirk andshortsword at his belt. It seemed to Arya there was something oddly familiar about him.

“If one Hand can die, why not a second?” replied the man with the accent and the forked yellowbeard. “You have danced the dance before, my friend.” He was no one Arya had ever seen before, shewas certain of it. Grossly fat, yet he seemed to walk lightly, carrying his weight on the balls of his feet as a water dancer might. His rings glimmered in the torchlight, red-gold and pale silver, crusted with rubies, sapphires, slitted yellow tiger eyes. Every finger wore a ring; some had two.

“Before is not now, and this Hand is not the other,” the scarred man said as they stepped out intothe hall. Still as stone, Arya told herself, quiet as a shadow. Blinded by the blaze of their own torch,they did not see her pressed flat against the stone, only a few feet away.

“Perhaps so,” the forked beard replied, pausing to catch his breath after the long climb.

“Nonetheless, we must have time. The princess is with child. The khal will not bestir himself untilhis son is born. You know how they are, these savages.”

The man with the torch pushed at something. Arya heard a deep rumbling. A huge slab of rock, redin the torchlight, slid down out of the ceiling with a resounding crash that almost made her cry out.

Where the entry to the well had been was nothing but stone, solid and unbroken.

“If he does not bestir himself soon, it may be too late,” the stout man in the steel cap said. “This isno longer a game for two players, if ever it was. Stannis Baratheon and Lysa Arryn have fled beyondmy reach, and the whispers say they are gathering swords around them. The Knight of Flowers writesHighgarden, urging his lord father to send his sister to court. The girl is a maid of fourteen, sweet andbeautiful and tractable, and Lord Renly and Ser Loras intend that Robert should bed her, wed her, andmake a new queen. Littlefinger … the gods only know what game Littlefinger is playing. Yet LordStark’s the one who troubles my sleep. He has the bastard, he has the book, and soon enough he’ll have the truth. And now his wife has abducted Tyrion Lannister, thanks to Littlefinger’s meddling.

Lord Tywin will take that for an outrage, and Jaime has a queer affection for the Imp. If the Lannisters move north, that will bring the Tullys in as well. Delay, you say. Make haste, I reply. Even the finest of jugglers cannot keep a hundred balls in the air forever.”

“You are more than a juggler, old friend. You are a true sorcerer. All I ask is that you work your magic a while longer.” They started down the hall in the direction Arya had come, past the room withthe monsters.

“What I can do, I will,” the one with the torch said softly. “I must have gold, and another fifty birds.”

She let them get a long way ahead, then went creeping after them. Quiet as a shadow.

“So many?” The voices were fainter as the light dwindled ahead of her. “The ones you need arehard to find … so young, to know their letters … perhaps older … not die so easy …”

“No. The younger are safer … treat them gently …”

“… if they kept their tongues …”

“… the risk …”

Long after their voices had faded away, Arya could still see the light of the torch, a smoking starthat bid her follow. Twice it seemed to disappear, but she kept on straight, and both times she foundherself at the top of steep, narrow stairs, the torch glimmering far below her. She hurried after it,down and down. Once she stumbled over a rock and fell against the wall, and her hand found rawearth supported by timbers, whereas before the tunnel had been dressed stone.

She must have crept after them for miles. Finally they were gone, but there was no place to go butforward. She found the wall again and followed, blind and lost, pretending that Nymeria was paddingalong beside her in the darkness. At the end she was knee-deep in foul-smelling water, wishing shecould dance upon it as Syrio might have, and wondering if she’d ever see light again. It was full darkwhen finally Arya emerged into the night air.

She found herself standing at the mouth of a sewer where it emptied into the river. She stank sobadly that she stripped right there, dropping her soiled clothing on the riverbank as she dove into thedeep black waters. She swam until she felt clean, and crawled out shivering. Some riders went pastalong the river road as Arya was washing her clothes, but if they saw the scrawny naked girlscrubbing her rags in the moonlight, they took no notice.

She was miles from the castle, but from anywhere in King’s Landing you needed only to look up tosee the Red Keep high on Aegon’s Hill, so there was no danger of losing her way. Her clothes werealmost dry by the time she reached the gatehouse. The portcullis was down and the gates barred, soshe turned aside to a postern door. The gold cloaks who had the watch sneered when she told them tolet her in. “Off with you,” one said. “The kitchen scraps are gone, and we’ll have no begging afterdark.”

“I’m not a beggar,” she said. “I live here.”

“I said, off with you. Do you need a clout on the ear to help your hearing?”

“I want to see my father.”

The guards exchanged a glance. “I want to fuck the queen myself, for all the good it does me,” theyounger one said.

The older scowled. “Who’s this father of yours, boy, the city ratcatcher?”

“The Hand of the King,” Arya told him.

Both men laughed, but then the older one swung his fist at her, casually, as a man would swat adog. Arya saw the blow coming even before it began. She danced back out of the way, untouched.

“I’m not a boy,” she spat at them. “I’m Arya Stark of Winterfell, and if you lay a hand on me mylord father will have both your heads on spikes. If you don’t believe me, fetch Jory Cassel or VayonPoole from the Tower of the Hand.” She put her hands on her hips. “Now are you going to open thegate, or do you need a clout on the ear to help your hearing?”

Her father was alone in the solar when Harwin and Fat Tom marched her in, an oil lamp glowingsoftly at his elbow. He was bent over the biggest book Arya had ever seen, a great thick tome withcracked yellow pages of crabbed script, bound between faded leather covers, but he closed it to listento Harwin’s report. His face was stern as he sent the men away with thanks.

“You realize I had half my guard out searching for you?” Eddard Stark said when they werealone. “Septa Mordane is beside herself with fear. She’s in the sept praying for your safe return. Arya,you know you are never to go beyond the castle gates without my leave.”

“I didn’t go out the gates,” she blurted. “Well, I didn’t mean to. I was down in the dungeons, onlythey turned into this tunnel. It was all dark, and I didn’t have a torch or a candle to see by, so I had tofollow. I couldn’t go back the way I came on account of the monsters. Father, they were talking aboutkilling you! Not the monsters, the two men. They didn’t see me, I was being still as stone and quiet asa shadow, but I heard them. They said you had a book and a bastard and if one Hand could die, whynot a second? Is that the book? Jon’s the bastard, I bet.”

“Jon? Arya, what are you talking about? Who said this?”

“They did,” she told him. “There was a fat one with rings and a forked yellow beard, and anotherin mail and a steel cap, and the fat one said they had to delay but the other one told him he couldn’tkeep juggling and the wolf and the lion were going to eat each other and it was a mummer’s farce.”

She tried to remember the rest. She hadn’t quite understood everything she’d heard, and now it wasall mixed up in her head. “The fat one said the princess was with child. The one in the steel cap, hehad the torch, he said that they had to hurry. I think he was a wizard.”

“A wizard,” said Ned, unsmiling. “Did he have a long white beard and tall pointed hat speckledwith stars?”

“No! It wasn’t like Old Nan’s stories. He didn’t look like a wizard, but the fat one said he was.”

“I warn you, Arya, if you’re spinning this thread of air—”

“No, I told you, it was in the dungeons, by the place with the secret wall. I was chasing cats, andwell …” She screwed up her face. If she admitted knocking over Prince Tommen, he would be reallyangry with her. “… well, I went in this window. That’s where I found the monsters.”

“Monsters and wizards,” her father said. “It would seem you’ve had quite an adventure. Thesemen you heard, you say they spoke of juggling and mummery?”

“Yes,” Arya admitted, “only—”

“Arya, they were mummers,” her father told her. “There must be a dozen troupes in King’sLanding right now, come to make some coin off the tourney crowds. I’m not certain what these twowere doing in the castle, but perhaps the king has asked for a show.”

“No.” She shook her head stubbornly. “They weren’t—”

“You shouldn’t be following people about and spying on them in any case. Nor do I cherish thenotion of my daughter climbing in strange windows after stray cats. Look at you, sweetling. Yourarms are covered with scratches. This has gone on long enough. Tell Syrio Forel that I want a wordwith him—”

He was interrupted by a short, sudden knock. “Lord Eddard, pardons,” Desmond called out,opening the door a crack, “but there’s a black brother here begging audience. He says the matter isurgent. I thought you would want to know.”

“My door is always open to the Night’s Watch,” Father said.

Desmond ushered the man inside. He was stooped and ugly, with an unkempt beard and unwashedclothes, yet Father greeted him pleasantly and asked his name.

dclothes, yet Father greeted him pleasantly and asked his name.

“Yoren, as it please m’lord. My pardons for the hour.” He bowed to Arya. “And this must be yourson. He has your look.”

“I’m a girl,” Arya said, exasperated. If the old man was down from the Wall, he must have comeby way of Winterfell. “Do you know my brothers?” she asked excitedly. “Robb and Bran are atWinterfell, and Jon’s on the Wall. Jon Snow, he’s in the Night’s Watch too, you must know him, hehas a direwolf, a white one with red eyes. Is Jon a ranger yet? I’m Arya Stark.” The old man in hissmelly black clothes was looking at her oddly, but Arya could not seem to stop talking. “When youride back to the Wall, would you bring Jon a letter if I wrote one?” She wished Jon were here rightnow. He’d believe her about the dungeons and the fat man with the forked beard and the wizard in thesteel cap.

“My daughter often forgets her courtesies,” Eddard Stark said with a faint smile that softened hiswords. “I beg your forgiveness, Yoren. Did my brother Benjen send you?”

“No one sent me, m’lord, saving old Mormont. I’m here to find men for the Wall, and whenRobert next holds court, I’ll bend the knee and cry our need, see if the king and his Hand have somescum in the dungeons they’d be well rid of. You might say as Benjen Stark is why we’re talking,though. His blood ran black. Made him my brother as much as yours. It’s for his sake I’m come. Rodehard, I did, near killed my horse the way I drove her, but I left the others well behind.”

“The others?”

Yoren spat. “Sellswords and freeriders and like trash. That inn was full o’ them, and I saw themtake the scent. The scent of blood or the scent of gold, they smell the same in the end. Not all o’ themmade for King’s Landing, either. Some went galloping for Casterly Rock, and the Rock lies closer.

Lord Tywin will have gotten the word by now, you can count on it.”

Father frowned. “What word is this?”

Yoren eyed Arya. “One best spoken in private, m’lord, begging your pardons.”

“As you say. Desmond, see my daughter to her chambers.” He kissed her on the brow. “We’llfinish our talk on the morrow.”

Arya stood rooted to the spot. “Nothing bad’s happened to Jon, has it?” she asked Yoren. “OrUncle Benjen?”

“Well, as to Stark, I can’t say. The Snow boy was well enough when I left the Wall. It’s not themas concerns me.”

Desmond took her hand. “Come along, milady. You heard your lord father.”

Arya had no choice but to go with him, wishing it had been Fat Tom. With Tom, she might havebeen able to linger at the door on some excuse and hear what Yoren was saying, but Desmond wastoo single-minded to trick. “How many guards does my father have?” she asked him as theydescended to her bedchamber.

“Here at King’s Landing? Fifty.”

“You wouldn’t let anyone kill him, would you?” she asked.

Desmond laughed. “No fear on that count, little lady. Lord Eddard’s guarded night and day. He’llcome to no harm.”

“The Lannisters have more than fifty men,” Arya pointed out.

“So they do, but every northerner is worth ten of these southron swords, so you can sleep easy.”

“What if a wizard was sent to kill him?”

“Well, as to that,” Desmond replied, drawing his longsword, “wizards die the same as other men,once you cut their heads off.”


	14. The brothel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddard finds the brothel, but finds someone he didn't expect.

Eddard

 

Eddard had thrown the badge at Robert's face.

The day felt heavy and oppressive as he crossed the bailey back to the Tower of the Hand. Hecould feel the threat of rain in the air. Ned would have welcomed it. It might have made him feel atrifle less unclean. When he reached his solar, he summoned Vayon Poole. The steward came at once.

“You sent for me, my lord Hand?”

“Hand no longer,” Ned told him. “The king and I have quarreled. We shall be returning toWinterfell.”

“I shall begin making arrangements at once, my lord. We will need a fortnight to ready everythingfor the journey.”

“We may not have a fortnight. We may not have a day. The king mentioned something aboutseeing my head on a spike.” Ned frowned. He did not truly believe the king would harm him, notRobert. He was angry now, but once Ned was safely out of sight, his rage would cool as it always did.

Suddenly, uncomfortably, he found himself recalling Rhaegar Targaryen. Fifteen years dead, yetRobert hates him as much as ever. It was a disturbing notion … and there was the other matter, thebusiness with Catelyn and the dwarf that Yoren had warned him of last night. That would come tolight soon, as sure as sunrise, and with the king in such a black fury … Robert might not care a fig forTyrion Lannister, but it would touch on his pride, and there was no telling what the queen might do.

“It might be safest if I went on ahead,” he told Poole. “I will take my daughters and a fewguardsmen. The rest of you can follow when you are ready. Inform Jory, but tell no one else, and donothing until the girls and I have gone. The castle is full of eyes and ears, and I would rather my planswere not known.”

“As you command, my lord.”

When he had gone, Eddard Stark went to the window and sat brooding. Robert had left him nochoice that he could see. He ought to thank him. It would be good to return to Winterfell. He oughtnever have left. His sons were waiting there. Perhaps he and Catelyn would make a new son togetherwhen he returned, they were not so old yet. And of late he had often found himself dreaming of snow,of the deep quiet of the wolfswood at night.

And yet, the thought of leaving angered him as well. So much was still undone. Robert and hiscouncil of cravens and flatterers would beggar the realm if left unchecked … or, worse, sell it to theLannisters in payment of their loans. And the truth of Jon Arryn’s death still eluded him. Oh, he hadfound a few pieces, enough to convince him that Jon had indeed been murdered, but that was no morethan the spoor of an animal on the forest floor. He had not sighted the beast itself yet, though hesensed it was there, lurking, hidden, treacherous.

It struck him suddenly that he might return to Winterfell by sea. Ned was no sailor, and ordinarilywould have preferred the kingsroad, but if he took ship he could stop at Dragonstone and speak withStannis Baratheon. Pycelle had sent a raven off across the water, with a polite letter from Nedrequesting Lord Stannis to return to his seat on the small council. As yet, there had been no reply, butthe silence only deepened his suspicions. Lord Stannis shared the secret Jon Arryn had died for, hewas certain of it. The truth he sought might very well be waiting for him on the ancient island fortressof House Targaryen.

And when you have it, what then? Some secrets are safer kept hidden. Some secrets are toodangerous to share, even with those you love and trust. Ned slid the dagger that Catelyn had broughthim out of the sheath on his belt. The Imp’s knife. Why would the dwarf want Bran dead? To silencehim, surely. Another secret, or only a different strand of the same web?

thim out of the sheath on his belt. The Imp’s knife. Why would the dwarf want Bran dead? To silencehim, surely. Another secret, or only a different strand of the same web?

Could Robert be part of it? He would not have thought so, but once he would not have thoughtRobert could command the murder of women and children either. Catelyn had tried to warn him. Youknew the man, she had said. The king is a stranger to you. The sooner he was quit of King’s Landing,the better. If there was a ship sailing north on the morrow, it would be well to be on it.

He summoned Vayon Poole again and sent him to the docks to make inquiries, quietly but quickly.

“Find me a fast ship with a skilled captain,” he told the steward. “I care nothing for the size of itscabins or the quality of its appointments, so long as it is swift and safe. I wish to leave at once.”

Poole had no sooner taken his leave than Tomard announced a visitor. “Lord Baelish to see you,m’lord.”

Ned was half-tempted to turn him away, but thought better of it. He was not free yet; until he was,he must play their games. “Show him in, Tom.”

Lord Petyr sauntered into the solar as if nothing had gone amiss that morning. He wore a slashedvelvet doublet in cream-and-silver, a grey silk cloak trimmed with black fox, and his customarymocking smile.

Ned greeted him coldly. “Might I ask the reason for this visit, Lord Baelish?”

“I won’t detain you long, I’m on my way to dine with Lady Tanda. Lamprey pie and roast suckling pig. She has some thought to wed me to her younger daughter, so her table is always astonishing. If truth be told, I’d sooner marry the pig, but don’t tell her. I do love lamprey pie.”

“Don’t let me keep you from your eels, my lord,” Ned said with icy disdain. “At the moment, Icannot think of anyone whose company I desire less than yours.”

“Oh, I’m certain if you put your mind to it, you could come up with a few names. Varys, say.

Cersei. Or Robert. His Grace is most wroth with you. He went on about you at some length after youtook your leave of us this morning. The words insolence and ingratitude came into it frequently, Iseem to recall.”

Ned did not honor that with a reply. Nor did he offer his guest a seat, but Littlefinger took oneanyway. “After you stormed out, it was left to me to convince them not to hire the Faceless Men,” he continued blithely. “Instead Varys will quietly let it be known that we’ll make a lord of whoever does in the Targaryen girl.”

Ned was disgusted. “So now we grant titles to assassins.”

Littlefinger shrugged. “Titles are cheap. The Faceless Men are expensive. If truth be told, I did the Targaryen girl more good than you with all your talk of honor. Let some sellsword drunk on visions of lordship try to kill her. Likely he’ll make a botch of it, and afterward the Dothraki will be on their guard. If we’d sent a Faceless Man after her, she’d be as good as buried.”

Ned frowned. “You sit in council and talk of ugly women and steel kisses, and now you expect me to believe that you tried to protect the girl? How big a fool do you take me for?”

“Well, quite an enormous one, actually,” said Littlefinger, laughing.

“Do you always find murder so amusing, Lord Baelish?”

“It’s not murder I find amusing, Lord Stark, it’s you. You rule like a man dancing on rotten ice. I dare say you will make a noble splash. I believe I heard the first crack this morning.”

“The first and last,” said Ned. “I’ve had my fill.”

“When do you mean to return to Winterfell, my lord?”

“As soon as I can. What concern is that of yours?”

“None … but if perchance you’re still here come evenfall, I’d be pleased to take you to this brothel your man Jory has been searching for so ineffectually.” Littlefinger smiled. “And I won’t even tell the Lady Catelyn.”

 

❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅

He found Littlefinger in the brothel’s common room, chatting amiably with a tall, elegant womanwho wore a feathered gown over skin as black as ink. By the hearth, Heward and a buxom wenchwere playing at forfeits. From the look of it, he’d lost his belt, his cloak, his mail shirt, and his rightboot so far, while the girl had been forced to unbutton her shift to the waist. Jory Cassel stood besidea rain-streaked window with a wry smile on his face, watching Heward turn over tiles and enjoying the view.

Ned paused at the foot of the stair and pulled on his gloves. “It’s time we took our leave. My business here is done.”

Heward lurched to his feet, hurriedly gathering up his things. “As you will, my lord,” Jory said.

“I’ll help Wyl bring round the horses.” He strode to the door.

Littlefinger took his time saying his farewells. He kissed the black woman’s hand, whispered somejoke that made her laugh aloud, and sauntered over to Ned. “Your business,” he said lightly, “or Robert’s? They say the Hand dreams the king’s dreams, speaks with the king’s voice, and rules with the king’s sword. Does that also mean you fuck with the king’s—”

“Lord Baelish,” Ned interrupted, “you presume too much. I am not ungrateful for your help. It might have taken us years to find this brothel without you. That does not mean I intend to endure your mockery. And I am no longer the King’s Hand.”

“The direwolf must be a prickly beast,” said Littlefinger with a sharp twist of his mouth.

A warm rain was pelting down from a starless black sky as they walked to the stables. Ned drew upthe hood of his cloak. Jory brought out his horse. Young Wyl came right behind him, leading Littlefinger’s mare with one hand while the other fumbled with his belt and the lacings of his trousers.

A barefoot whore leaned out of the stable door, giggling at him.

“Will we be going back to the castle now, my lord?” Jory asked. Ned nodded and swung into the saddle. Littlefinger mounted up beside him. Jory and the others followed.

“Chataya runs a choice establishment,” Littlefinger said as they rode. “I’ve half a mind to buy it.

Brothels are a much sounder investment than ships, I’ve found. Whores seldom sink, and when they are boarded by pirates, why, the pirates pay good coin like everyone else.” Lord Petyr chuckled at his own wit.

Ned let him prattle on. After a time, he quieted and they rode in silence. The streets of King’s Landing were dark and deserted. The rain had driven everyone under their roofs. It beat down on Ned’s head, warm as blood and relentless as old guilts. Fat drops of water ran down his face.

“Robert will never keep to one bed,” Lyanna had told him at Winterfell, on the night long ago when their father had promised her hand to the young Lord of Storm’s End. “I hear he has gotten a child on some girl in the Vale.” Ned had held the babe in his arms; he could scarcely deny her, nor would he lie to his sister, but he had assured her that what Robert did before their betrothal was of no matter, that he was a good man and true who would love her with all his heart. Lyanna had only smiled. “Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man’s nature.”

The girl had been so young Ned had not dared to ask her age. No doubt she’d been a virgin; the better brothels could always find a virgin, if the purse was fat enough. She had light red hair and a powdering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and when she slipped free a breast to give her nipple to the babe, he saw that her bosom was freckled as well. “I named her Barra,” she said as the child nursed. “She looks so like him, does she not, milord? She has his nose, and his hair …”

“She does.” Eddard Stark had touched the baby’s fine, dark hair. It flowed through his fingers like black silk. Robert’s firstborn had had the same fine hair, he seemed to recall.

“Tell him that when you see him, milord, as it … as it please you. Tell him how beautiful she is.”

“I will,” Ned had promised her. That was his curse. Robert would swear undying love and forget them before evenfall, but Ned Stark kept his vows. He thought of the promises he’d made Lyanna as she lay dying, and the price he’d paid to keep them.

“And tell him I’ve not been with no one else. I swear it, milord, by the old gods and new. Chataya said I could have half a year, for the baby, and for hoping he’d come back. So you’ll tell him I’m waiting, won’t you? I don’t want no jewels or nothing, just him. He was always good to me, truly.”

Good to you, Ned thought hollowly. “I will tell him, child, and I promise you, Barra shall not go wanting.”

She had smiled then, a smile so tremulous and sweet that it cut the heart out of him. Riding through the rainy night, Ned saw Jon Snow’s face in front of him, so like a younger version of his own. If the gods frowned so on bastards, he thought dully, why did they fill men with such lusts? “Lord Baelish,what do you know of Robert’s bastards?”

“Well, he has more than you, for a start.”

“How many?”

Littlefinger shrugged. Rivulets of moisture twisted down the back of his cloak. “Does it matter? If you bed enough women, some will give you presents, and His Grace has never been shy on that count. I know he’s acknowledged that boy at Storm’s End, the one he fathered the night Lord Stannis wed. He could hardly do otherwise. The mother was a Florent, niece to the Lady Selyse, one of her bedmaids. Renly says that Robert carried the girl upstairs during the feast, and broke in the weddingbed while Stannis and his bride were still dancing. Lord Stannis seemed to think that was a blot on the honor of his wife’s House, so when the boy was born, he shipped him off to Renly.” He gave Ned asideways glance. “I’ve also heard whispers that Robert got a pair of twins on a serving wench at Casterly Rock, three years ago when he went west for Lord Tywin’s tourney. Cersei had the babes killed, and sold the mother to a passing slaver. Too much an affront to Lannister pride, that close to home.”

Ned Stark grimaced. Ugly tales like that were told of every great lord in the realm. He could believe it of Cersei Lannister readily enough … but would the king stand by and let it happen? The Robert he had known would not have, but the Robert he had known had never been so practiced at shutting his eyes to things he did not wish to see. “Why would Jon Arryn take a sudden interest in the king’s baseborn children?”

The short man gave a sodden shrug. “He was the King’s Hand. Doubtless Robert asked him to see that they were provided for.”

Ned was soaked through to the bone, and his soul had grown cold. “It had to be more than that, or why kill him?”

Littlefinger shook the rain from his hair and laughed. “Now I see. Lord Arryn learned that His Grace had filled the bellies of some whores and fishwives, and for that he had to be silenced. Small wonder. Allow a man like that to live, and next he’s like to blurt out that the sun rises in the east.”

There was no answer Ned Stark could give to that but a frown. For the first time in years, he found himself remembering Rhaegar Targaryen. He wondered if Rhaegar had frequented brothels; somehow he thought not.

The rain was falling harder now, stinging the eyes and drumming against the ground. Rivers of black water were running down the hill when Jory called out, “My lord,” his voice hoarse with alarm.

And in an instant, the street was full of soldiers.

Ned glimpsed ringmail over leather, gauntlets and greaves, steel helms with golden lions on the crests. Their cloaks clung to their backs, sodden with rain. He had no time to count, but there were ten at least, a line of them, on foot, blocking the street, with longswords and iron-tipped spears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be Lyria, I promise!


	15. The Lannister ward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyria is back!

Lyria

 

It had been raining all day, and Lyria has to stay in the keep. She sighed as she looked out the window and find it's still dark outside.

She was sitting in her room for a long time until Jamie rushes in. She could immediately tell that something is wrong.

“Prepare your clothes, we needs to go to the gates immediately.”he ordered.

Lyria was suprised, she had never seen Jamie in that speaking like that. Suspect that it won't go well, she hid Twilight,her sword that she kept since Joffrey's Nameday Competition,in her clothes.

When they rode out the city, she sees that a group ofLannister riders has been waiting them. Sensing that something are wrong, she tried to jolt, but two men run forward and pinned her to the ground. Lyria screams for help but one men blocked her mouth and tied her on a mare.

Jamie stood and watch as Lyria struggles and kicked, his eyes held no pity.

"Let's go." He ordered the riders, and they set off in the rain.

They rode for a time, when the rain began to get heavier, the sky was darker. When they rode, question kept appearing in Lyria's head. Where are they taking her to? Why are they doing this? Then they stopped. Lyria tried to get a look at the front, it's a brothel, exactly the one her father was looking for, her heart dropped.

“Behind!” she heard Wyl cry, and when he turned his horse, there were more in back of them, cutting off their retreat. Jory’s sword came singing from its scabbard. “Make way or die!”

“The wolves are howling,” Jamie said. Lyria could see rain running down his face. “Such a small pack, though.”

Littlefinger walked his horse forward, step by careful step. “What is the meaning of this? This is the Hand of the King.”

“He was the Hand of the King.” The mud muffled the hooves of the blood bay stallion. The line parted before him. On a golden breastplate, the lion of Lannister roared its defiance. “Now, if truth be told, I’m not sure what he is.”

“Lannister, this is madness,” Littlefinger said. “Let us pass. We are expected back at the castle. What do you think you’re doing?”

“He knows what he’s doing,” Father said calmly.

Jaime Lannister smiled. “Quite true. I’m looking for my brother. You remember my brother, don’t you, Lord Stark? He was with us at Winterfell. Fair-haired, mismatched eyes, sharp of tongue. A short man.”

“I remember him well,” Ned replied.

“It would seem he has met some trouble on the road. My lord father is quite vexed. You would not perchance have any notion of who might have wished my brother ill, would you?”

“Your brother has been taken at my command, to answer for his crimes,” Eddard Stark said.

Littlefinger groaned in dismay. “My lords—”

Ser Jaime ripped his longsword from its sheath and urged his stallion forward. “Show me your steel, Lord Eddard. I’ll butcher you like Aerys if I must, but I’d sooner you died with a blade in your hand.” He gave Littlefinger a cool, contemptuous glance. “Lord Baelish, I’d leave here in some haste if I did not care to get bloodstains on my costly clothing.”

Littlefinger did not need to be urged. “I will bring the City Watch,” he promised Father. The Lannister line parted to let him through, and closed behind him. Littlefinger put his heels to his mare and vanished around a corner.

Ned’s men had drawn their swords, but they were three against twenty. Eyes watched from nearby windows and doors, but no one was about to intervene. His party was mounted, the Lannisters on foot save for Jaime himself. A charge might win them free, but it seemed to Eddard Stark that they had a surer, safer tactic. “Kill me,” he warned the Kingslayer, “and Catelyn will most certainly slay Tyrion.”

Jaime Lannister poked at Ned’s chest with the gilded sword that had sipped the blood of the last of the Dragonkings. “Would she? The noble Catelyn Tully of Riverrun murder a hostage? I think … not.” He sighed. “But I am not willing to chance my brother’s life on a woman’s honor.”

Jaime slid the golden sword into its sheath. “So I suppose I’ll let you run back to Robert to tell him how I frightened you. I wonder if he’ll care.” Jaime pushed his wet hair back with his fingers andwheeled his horse around. When he was beyond the line of swordsmen, he glanced back at his captain. “Tregar, see that no harm comes to Lord Stark.”

“As you say, m’lord.”

“Still … we wouldn’t want him to leave here entirely unchastened, so”—through the night and the rain, she glimpsed the white of Jaime’s smile—“kill his men.”

“No!” she hear father screamed, clawing for his sword. Jaime was already cantering off down the street as she heard Wyl shout. Men closed from both sides. Father rode one down, cutting at phantoms in red cloaks who gave way before him. Jory Cassel put his heels into his mount and charged. A steel-shod hoof caught a Lannister guardsman in the face with a sickening crunch. A second man reeled away and for an instant Jory was free. Wyl cursed as they pulled him off his dying horse, swords slashing in the rain. Ned galloped to him, bringing his longsword down on Tregar’s helm. The jolt ofimpact made him grit his teeth. Tregar stumbled to his knees, his lion crest sheared in half, blood running down his face. Heward was hacking at the hands that had seized his bridle when a spear caught him in the belly. Suddenly Jory was back among them, a red rain flying from his sword. “No!”

Father shouted. “Jory, away!” but his horse slipped under him and came crashing down in the mud.

She saw them cut the legs from Jory’s mount and drag him to the earth, swords rising and falling as they closed in around him. When father's horse lurched back to its feet, he tried to rise, only to fall again, choking on his scream.

Jamie rode to him,"Took little wolf here," he ordered.

Lyria was dragged forward by two men,she could see the horror on her father's face when she appeared, "Let her go!"He said in a low voice. 

Jamie laughed, his men laughed with him."No. Stark, little wolf will go with me.You took my brother, then I will take your daughter. The Lannisters always pay their debts, Lord Eddard, you shouldn't forget that. "

This seemed sentenced her death, "No!"She screamed, chocking on her tears.

"Please, father, father!"

Her father was struggling in mud, but his wound was too deep for him to move.

"Father!" She screamed again, "Stop them, father, I don't want to go with them…"

When Jamie ordered them to leave, she couldn't control herself anymore, her tears flows down her face, along with the rain. But this time no one is going to wipe them for her.

"Father!"

❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅❅

They rode west. Casterly Rock, she thought, they are going to take me there. She has heard of Tywin Lannister for his rustness and cruelty, Tyrion has warned her too about him.

She was tied on a horse all day, at night she is tied up on a tree. Jamie made sure that she was watched all day. 

One night he came to her, "Are you well?" he asked causaly, just like nothing had happened.

She felt anger rose in her body. And she's determined not to answer him.

"Answer,"Jamie repeated, seeing that she was refusing him, Jamie smirked and lift her face with a finger, forcing Lyria to look at him. "I admire your strength, little wolf, but don't forget that your pack is not here to help you now, and our lions have claws as same as your wolves."

After saying this, he left, leaving Lyria to her thoughts.

A few days later, Lyria comes up with a plan. When the soliders are exchanging their post, she quickly cut her rope with a sharp stone, then, she grab all the things she had, and jumped on a mare. She rode one down and hurried into the dark night.Arrows are flying beside her, but none had shoot the target. In a short time, she had gone for miles.


	16. The champion for the dwarf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyrion finds himself a champion

Tyrion

 

For the past days, Tyrion Lannister was kept in the Eyrie. After days of planning and endless pleadings, he was lead to the halls for his "Confession of crimes".

The High Hall of the Arryns was aglow with the light of fifty torches, burning in the sconces alongthe walls. The Lady Lysa wore black silk, with the moon-and-falcon sewn on her breast in pearls.

Since she did not look the sort to join the Night’s Watch, Tyrion could only imagine that she had decided mourning clothes were appropriate garb for a confession. Her long auburn hair, woven intoan elaborate braid, fell across her left shoulder. The taller throne beside her was empty; no doubt thelittle Lord of the Eyrie was off shaking in his sleep. Tyrion was thankful for that much, at least.

He bowed deeply and took a moment to glance around the hall. Lady Arryn had summoned her knights and retainers to hear his confession, as he had hoped. He saw Ser Brynden Tully’s craggy face and Lord Nestor Royce’s bluff one. Beside Nestor stood a younger man with fierce blackside whiskers who could only be his heir, Ser Albar. Most of the principal houses of the Vale were represented. Tyrion noted Ser Lyn Corbray, slender as a sword, Lord Hunter with his gouty legs, the widowed Lady Waynwood surrounded by her sons. Others sported sigils he did not know; broken lance, green viper, burning tower, winged chalice.

Among the lords of the Vale were several of his companions from the high road; Ser Rodrik Cassel, pale from half-healed wounds, stood with Ser Willis Wode beside him. Marillion the singer had found a new woodharp. Tyrion smiled; whatever happened here tonight, he did not wish it to happen in secret, and there was no one like a singer for spreading a story near and far.

In the rear of the hall, Bronn lounged beneath a pillar. The freerider’s black eyes were fixed on Tyrion, and his hand lay lightly on the pommel of his sword. Tyrion gave him a long look,wondering …Catelyn Stark spoke first. “You wish to confess your crimes, we are told.”

“I do, my lady,” Tyrion answered.

Lysa Arryn smiled at her sister. “The sky cells always break them. The gods can see them there,and there is no darkness to hide in.”

“He does not look broken to me,” Lady Catelyn said.

Lady Lysa paid her no mind. “Say what you will,” she commanded Tyrion.

And now to roll the dice, he thought with another quick glance back at Bronn. “Where to begin? I am a vile little man, I confess it. My crimes and sins are beyond counting, my lords and ladies. I have lain with whores, not once but hundreds of times. I have wished my own lord father dead, and my sister, our gracious queen, as well.” Behind him, someone chuckled. “I have not always treated my servants with kindness. I have gambled. I have even cheated, I blush to admit. I have said many cruel and malicious things about the noble lords and ladies of the court.” That drew outright laughter.

“Once I—”

“Silence!” Lysa Arryn’s pale round face had turned a burning pink. “What do you imagine you are doing, dwarf?”

Tyrion cocked his head to one side. “Why, confessing my crimes, my lady.”

Catelyn Stark took a step forward. “You are accused of sending a hired knife to slay my son Bran in his bed, and of conspiring to murder Lord Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King.”

Tyrion gave a helpless shrug. “Those crimes I cannot confess, I fear. I know nothing of any murders.”

Lady Lysa rose from her weirwood throne. “I will not be made mock of. You have had your little jape, Imp. I trust you enjoyed it. Ser Vardis, take him back to the dungeon … but this time find him a smaller cell, with a floor more sharply sloped.”

“Is this how justice is done in the Vale?” Tyrion roared, so loudly that Ser Vardis froze for an instant. “Does honor stop at the Bloody Gate? You accuse me of crimes, I deny them, so you throw me into an open cell to freeze and starve.” He lifted his head, to give them all a good look at the bruises Mord had left on his face. “Where is the king’s justice? Is the Eyrie not part of the Seven Kingdoms? I stand accused, you say. Very well. I demand a trial! Let me speak, and let my truth or falsehood be judged openly, in the sight of gods and men.”

A low murmuring filled the High Hall. He had her, Tyrion knew. He was highborn, the son of the most powerful lord in the realm, the brother of the queen. He could not be denied a trial. Guardsmen in sky-blue cloaks had started toward Tyrion, but Ser Vardis bid them halt and looked to Lady Lysa.

Her small mouth twitched in a petulant smile. “If you are tried and found to be guilty of the crimes for which you stand accused, then by the king’s own laws, you must pay with your life’s blood. We keep no headsman in the Eyrie, my lord of Lannister. Open the Moon Door.”

The press of spectators parted. A narrow weirwood door stood between two slender marble pillars,a crescent moon carved in the white wood. Those standing closest edged backward as a pair of guardsmen marched through. One man removed the heavy bronze bars; the second pulled the door inward. Their blue cloaks rose snapping from their shoulders, caught in the sudden gust of wind that came howling through the open door. Beyond was the emptiness of the night sky, speckled with cold uncaring stars.

“Behold the king’s justice,” Lysa Arryn said. Torch flames fluttered like pennons along the walls,and here and there the odd torch guttered out.

“Lysa, I think this unwise,” Catelyn Stark said as the black wind swirled around the hall.

Her sister ignored her. “You want a trial, my lord of Lannister. Very well, a trial you shall have. My son will listen to whatever you care to say, and you shall hear his judgment. Then you may leave … by one door or the other.”

She looked so pleased with herself, Tyrion thought, and small wonder. How could a trial threaten her, when her weakling son was the lord judge? Tyrion glanced at her Moon Door. Mother, I want tosee him fly! the boy had said. How many men had the snot-nosed little wretch sent through that door already?

“I thank you, my good lady, but I see no need to trouble Lord Robert,” Tyrion said politely. “Thegods know the truth of my innocence. I will have their verdict, not the judgment of men. I demand trial by combat.”

A storm of sudden laughter filled the High Hall of the Arryns. Lord Nestor Royce snorted, Ser Willis chuckled, Ser Lyn Corbray guffawed, and others threw back their heads and howled until tears ran down their faces. Marillion clumsily plucked a gay note on his new woodharp with the fingers of his broken hand. Even the wind seemed to whistle with derision as it came skirling through the Moon Door.

Lysa Arryn’s watery blue eyes looked uncertain. He had caught her off balance. “You have that right, to be sure.”

The young knight with the green viper embroidered on his surcoat stepped forward and went to one knee. “My lady, I beg the boon of championing your cause.”

“The honor should be mine,” old Lord Hunter said. “For the love I bore your lord husband, let me avenge his death.”

“My father served Lord Jon faithfully as High Steward of the Vale,” Ser Albar Royce boomed.

“Let me serve his son in this.”

“The gods favor the man with the just cause,” said Ser Lyn Corbray, “yet often that turns out to be the man with the surest sword. We all know who that is.” He smiled modestly.

A dozen other men all spoke at once, clamoring to be heard. Tyrion found it disheartening to realize so many strangers were eager to kill him. Perhaps this had not been such a clever plan after all.

Lady Lysa raised a hand for silence. “I thank you, my lords, as I know my son would thank you if he were among us. No men in the Seven Kingdoms are as bold and true as the knights of the Vale.

Would that I could grant you all this honor. Yet I can choose only one.” She gestured. “Ser Vardis Egen, you were ever my lord husband’s good right hand. You shall be our champion.”

Ser Vardis had been singularly silent. “My lady,” he said gravely, sinking to one knee, “pray give this burden to another, I have no taste for it. The man is no warrior. Look at him. A dwarf, half my size and lame in the legs. It would be shameful to slaughter such a man and call it justice.”

Oh, excellent, Tyrion thought. “I agree.”

Lysa glared at him. “You demanded a trial by combat.”

“And now I demand a champion, such as you have chosen for yourself. My brother Jaime will gladly take my part, I know.”

“Your precious Kingslayer is hundreds of leagues from here,” snapped Lysa Arryn.

“Send a bird for him. I will gladly await his arrival.”

“You will face Ser Vardis on the morrow.”

“Singer,” Tyrion said, turning to Marillion, “when you make a ballad of this, be certain you tell them how Lady Arryn denied the dwarf the right to a champion, and sent him forth lame and bruised and hobbling to face her finest knight.”

“I deny you nothing!” Lysa Arryn said, her voice peeved and shrill with irritation. “Name your champion, Imp … if you think you can find a man to die for you.”

“If it is all the same to you, I’d sooner find one to kill for me.” Tyrion looked over the long hall.

No one moved. For a long moment he wondered if it had all been a colossal blunder.

Then there was a stirring in the rear of the chamber. “I’ll stand for the dwarf,” Bronn called out.


	17. The dream and the reality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ned's dream, there is a post-credits scene inside.

Eddard

 

He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and Lyanna in her bed of blood.

In the dream his friends rode with him, as they had in life. Proud Martyn Cassel, Jory’s father;faithful Theo Wull; Ethan Glover, who had been Brandon’s squire; Ser Mark Ryswell, soft of speechand gentle of heart; the crannogman, Howland Reed; Lord Dustin on his great red stallion. Ned had known their faces as well as he knew his own once, but the years leech at a man’s memories, even those he has vowed never to forget. In the dream they were only shadows, grey wraiths on horses made of mist.

They were seven, facing three. In the dream as it had been in life. Yet these were no ordinary three.

They waited before the round tower, the red mountains of Dorne at their backs, their white cloaksblowing in the wind. And these were no shadows; their faces burned clear, even now. Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, had a sad smile on his lips, Prince Aegon beside him. The hilt of the greatsword Dawn pokedup over his right shoulder. Ser Oswell Whent was on one knee, sharpening his blade with awhetstone. Across his white-enameled helm, the black bat of his House spread its wings. Between them stood fierce old Ser Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

“I looked for you on the Trident,” Ned said to them.

“We were not there,” Ser Gerold answered.

“Woe to the Usurper if we had been,” said Ser Oswell.

“When King’s Landing fell, Ser Jaime slew your king with a golden sword, and I wondered where you were.”

“Far away,” Ser Gerold said, “or Aerys would yet sit the Iron Throne, and our false brother would burn in seven hells.”

“I came down on Storm’s End to lift the siege,” Ned told them, “and the Lords Tyrell and Redwyne dipped their banners, and all their knights bent the knee to pledge us fealty. I was certain you would be among them.”

“Our knees do not bend easily,” said Ser Arthur Dayne.

“Ser Willem Darry is fled to Dragonstone, with your queen and Prince Viserys. I thought youmight have sailed with him.”

“Ser Willem is a good man and true,” said Ser Oswell.

“But not of the Kingsguard,” Ser Gerold pointed out. “The Kingsguard does not flee.”

“Then or now,” said Ser Arthur. He donned his helm.

“We swore a vow,” explained old Ser Gerold.

Ned’s wraiths moved up beside him, with shadow swords in hand. They were seven against three.

“And now it begins,” said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He mounted with Prince Aegon in front of him. He rode away, with a nod from his Captain.

“No,” Ned said with sadness in his voice. “Now it ends.” As they came together in a rush of steeland shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming. “Eddard!” she called. A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death.

“Lord Eddard,” Lyanna called again.

“I promise,” he whispered. “Lya, I promise …”

“Lord Eddard,” a man echoed from the dark.

Groaning, Eddard Stark opened his eyes. Moonlight streamed through the tall windows of the Tower of the Hand.

“Lord Eddard?” A shadow stood over the bed.

“How … how long?” The sheets were tangled, his leg splinted and plastered. A dull throb of painshot up his side.

“Six days and seven nights.” The voice was Vayon Poole’s. The steward held a cup to Ned’s lips.

“Drink, my lord.”

“What …?”

“Only water. Maester Pycelle said you would be thirsty.”

Ned drank. His lips were parched and cracked. The water tasted sweet as honey.

“The king left orders,” Vayon Poole told him when the cup was empty. “He would speak withyou, my lord.”

“On the morrow,” Ned said. “When I am stronger.” He could not face Robert now. The dream hadleft him weak as a kitten.

“My lord,” Poole said, “he commanded us to send you to him the moment you opened your eyes.”

The steward busied himself lighting a bedside candle.

Ned cursed softly. Robert was never known for his patience. “Tell him I’m too weak to come tohim. If he wishes to speak with me, I should be pleased to receive him here. I hope you wake himfrom a sound sleep. And summon …” He was about to say Jory when he remembered. “Summon thecaptain of my guard.”

Alyn stepped into the bedchamber a few moments after the steward had taken his leave. “My lord.”

“Poole tells me it has been six days,” Ned said. “I must know how things stand.”

“The Kingslayer is fled the city… alongside with Lady Lyria,” Alyn told him. “The talk is he’s ridden back to Casterly Rock to join his father. The story of how Lady Catelyn took the Imp is on every lip. I have put on extra guards, if it please you.”

Lyria… He closes his eyes. Father. She had cried, plead for him to save her. Father help me…

“It does,” Ned assured him. “My daughters?”

“They have been with you every day, my lord. Sansa prays quietly, but Arya …” He hesitated.

“She has not said a word since they brought you back. She is a fierce little thing, my lord. I havenever seen such anger in a girl.”

“Whatever happens,” Ned said, “I want my daughters kept safe. I fear this is only the beginning.”

“No harm will come to them, Lord Eddard,” Alyn said. “I stake my life on that.”

“Jory and the others …”

“I gave them over to the silent sisters, to be sent north to Winterfell. Jory would want to lie beside his grandfather.”

It would have to be his grandfather, for Jory’s father was buried far to the south. Martyn Cassel had perished with the rest. Ned had pulled the tower down afterward, and used its bloody stones to build seven cairns upon the ridge. It was said that Rhaegar had named that place the tower of joy, but for Ned it was a bitter memory. They had been seven against three, yet only two had lived to ride away;Eddard Stark himself and the little crannogman, Howland Reed. He did not think it omened well that he should dream that dream again after so many years.

“You’ve done well, Alyn,” Ned was saying when Vayon Poole returned. The steward bowed low.

“His Grace is without, my lord, and the queen with him.”

Ned pushed himself up higher, wincing as his leg trembled with pain. He had not expected Cersei to come. It did not bode well that she had. “Send them in, and leave us. What we have to say should not go beyond these walls.” Poole withdrew quietly.

Robert had taken time to dress. He wore a black velvet doublet with the crowned stag of Baratheon worked upon the breast in golden thread, and a golden mantle with a cloak of black and gold squares.

A flagon of wine was in his hand, his face already flushed from drink. Cersei Lannister entered behind him, a jeweled tiara in her hair.

“Your Grace,” Ned said. “Your pardons. I cannot rise.”

“No matter,” the king said gruffly. “Some wine? From the Arbor. A good vintage.”

“A small cup,” Ned said. “My head is still heavy from the milk of the poppy.”

“A man in your place should count himself fortunate that his head is still on his shoulders,” the queen declared.

“Quiet, woman,” Robert snapped. He brought Ned a cup of wine. “Does the leg still pain you?”

“Some,” Ned said. His head was swimming, but it would not do to admit to weakness in front of the queen.

“Pycelle swears it will heal clean,” Robert frowned. “I take it you know what Catelyn has done?”

“I do.” Ned took a small swallow of wine. “My lady wife is blameless, Your Grace. All she didshe did at my command.”

“I am not pleased, Ned,” Robert grumbled.

“By what right do you dare lay hands on my blood?” Cersei demanded. “Who do you think youare?”

“The Hand of the King,” Ned told her with icy courtesy. “Charged by your own lord husband tokeep the king’s peace and enforce the king’s justice.”

“You were the Hand,” Cersei began, “but now—”

“Silence!” the king roared. “You asked him a question and he answered it.” Cersei subsided, coldwith anger, and Robert turned back to Ned. “Keep the king’s peace, you say. Is this how you keep my peace, Ned? Seven men are dead …”

“Eight,” the queen corrected. “Tregar died this morning, of the blow Lord Stark gave him.”

“Abductions on the kingsroad and drunken slaughter in my streets,” the king said. “I will not haveit, Ned.”

“Catelyn had good reason for taking the Imp—”

“I said, I will not have it! To hell with her reasons. You will command her to release the dwarf atonce, and you will make your peace with Jaime.”

“Three of my men were butchered before my eyes, my daughter taken against her wills, because Jaime Lannister wished to chasten me. Am I to forget that?”

“My brother was not the cause of this quarrel,” Cersei told the king. “Lord Stark was returningdrunk from a brothel. His men attacked Jaime and his guards, even as his wife attacked Tyrion on thekingsroad.”

“You know me better than that, Robert,” Ned said. “Ask Lord Baelish if you doubt me. He wasthere.”

“I’ve talked to Littlefinger,” Robert said. “He claims he rode off to bring the gold cloaks beforethe fighting began, but he admits you were returning from some whorehouse.”

“Some whorehouse? Damn your eyes, Robert, I went there to have a look at your daughter! Her mother has named her Barra. She looks like that first girl you fathered, when we were boys together in the Vale.” He watched the queen as he spoke; her face was a mask, still and pale, betraying nothing.

Robert flushed. “Barra,” he grumbled. “Is that supposed to please me? Damn the girl. I thought she had more sense.”

“She cannot be more than fifteen, and a whore, and you thought she had sense?” Ned said,incredulous. His leg was beginning to pain him sorely. It was hard to keep his temper. “The fool child is in love with you, Robert.”

The king glanced at Cersei. “This is no fit subject for the queen’s ears.”

“Her Grace will have no liking for anything I have to say,” Ned replied. “I am told the Kingslayer has fled the city and took Lyria. Give me leave to bring him back to justice.”

The king swirled the wine in his cup, brooding. He took a swallow. “No,” he said. “I want no more of this. Jaime slew three of your men, and you five of his. Now it ends.”

“Is that your notion of justice?” Ned flared. “If so, I am pleased that I am no longer your Hand.”

The queen looked to her husband. “If any man had dared speak to a Targaryen as he has spoken to you—”

“Do you take me for Aerys?” Robert interrupted.

“I took you for a king. Jaime and Tyrion are your own brothers, by all the laws of marriage and the bonds we share. The Starks have driven off the one and seized the other. This man dishonors you with every breath he takes, and yet you stand there meekly, asking if his leg pains him and would he like some wine.”

Robert’s face was dark with anger. “How many times must I tell you to hold your tongue, woman?”

Cersei’s face was a study in contempt. “What a jape the gods have made of us two,” she said. “By all rights, you ought to be in skirts and me in mail.”

Purple with rage, the king lashed out, a vicious backhand blow to the side of the head. She stumbled against the table and fell hard, yet Cersei Lannister did not cry out. Her slender fingers brushed her cheek, where the pale smooth skin was already reddening. On the morrow the bruise would cover half her face. “I shall wear this as a badge of honor,” she announced.

“Wear it in silence, or I’ll honor you again,” Robert vowed. He shouted for a guard. Ser Meryn Trant stepped into the room, tall and somber in his white armor. “The queen is tired. See her to her bedchamber.” The knight helped Cersei to her feet and led her out without a word.

Robert reached for the flagon and refilled his cup. “You see what she does to me, Ned.” The king seated himself, cradling his wine cup. “My loving wife. The mother of my children.” The rage was gone from him now; in his eyes Ned saw something sad and scared. “I should not have hit her. That was not … that was not kingly.” He stared down at his hands, as if he did not quite know what they were. “I was always strong … no one could stand before me, no one. How do you fight someone if you can’t hit them?” Confused, the king shook his head. “Rhaegar … Rhaegar won, damn him. I killed him, Ned, I drove the spike right through that black armor into his black heart, and he died at my feet. They made up songs about it. Yet somehow he still won. He has Lyanna now, and I have her.” The king drained his cup.

“Your Grace,” Ned Stark said, “we must talk …”

Robert pressed his fingertips against his temples. “I am sick unto death of talk. On the morrow I’m going to the kingswood to hunt. Whatever you have to say can wait until I return.”

“If the gods are good, I shall not be here on your return. You commanded me to return to Winterfell, remember?”

Robert stood up, grasping one of the bedposts to steady himself. “The gods are seldom good, Ned. Here, this is yours.” He pulled the heavy silver hand clasp from a pocket in the lining of his cloak and tossed it on the bed. “Like it or not, you are my Hand, damn you. I forbid you to leave.”

“What about Lyria?”Eddard questioned, “Do you just let Jamie Lannister take her and do nothing?”

“She is his squire and a ward to House Lannister, it's his right to take her, Ned.”The King sighed.

Ned picked up the silver clasp. He was being given no choice, it seemed. Forgive me, Ria. His leg throbbed, and hefelt as helpless as a child. “The Targaryen girl—”

The king groaned. “Seven hells, don’t start with her again. That’s done, I’ll hear no more of it.”

“Why would you want me as your Hand, if you refuse to listen to my counsel?”

“Why?” Robert laughed. “Why not? Someone has to rule this damnable kingdom. Put on the badge, Ned. It suits you. And if you ever throw it in my face again, I swear to you, I’ll pin the damned thing on Jaime Lannister.”


	18. The wounded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyria is back！！！！！

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! This chapter will include a new character. See the notes at the end.

Lyria

 

He was totally angered when they told him that the Stark girl had escaped, how on earth can a group of red-cloaks let a unarmed thirteen years old girl escape? 

"Who was guarding her?"He yelled, the soldiers all step back, not daring to provoke the Lannister lion more. 

They then set out to find the girl, she is smart for she always rode in the woods. But lucky for them that it has just rained so footprints can be seen clearly, they leads them up to a small village. After some questioning, a villager told them that he has seen a young lady who has just left for ten minutes. This had encouraged the soldiers, soon they caught on with her, before she could react, the archers shoot down her mare down, and the girl is thrown on the ground.

She looked up at them and run , just like a trapped beast,but then an arrow shot her leg and she fell down, wincing at the pain.

Jamie looked at her, deciding to talk to her a moment later, then, he ordered: "Tie her up.", and left.

At that night,he went to her, she was almost asleep but wake up as soon as she notice him. He smiles bitterly, and they just sit in silence for a moment. 

"Are you here to watch me screaming or moaning in pain? If that, I will tell you that you will never do that in front of a Lannister."

Jamie sighed, frustrated. "Why do you always think the worst of me? I don't remember I have wronged you. "

"You butchered my men,you broke my fathers leg, why do you do that?" 

"Why? Because your dear mother captured my brother for nothing."He was surprised to see the expression on her face."Don't you know that?"

"No!"She shook her head."I--I'm sorry, "

"Don't be,"He told her, "You only need to be sorry if you escape again, and I hope that never happens."

"I hope the same,Ser."She answered.

Then he left Lyria Stark in her bonds.

A day later, a boy hurried to him. "M'lord, the Stark girl … she has just passed out."

"What?"Jamie questioned,"How did it happen?"

"Lord Jeff is with her, M'lord, he says her wounds are infected and she's not in a good condition, he tells me to bring you there immediately, M'lord."

Jamie nodded, Jeff Lannister is his nephew, son of his cousin Solion. Also one of the few Lannisters that knows something about medicine. He hopes he will success. He'd better, he thought bitterly.

"Take me there immediately."He orders. The boy obeyed, they arrived at a small tent, the guards quickly opened the cover, fear to cause unnecessary problems by anger him at this point.

The girl is laying on the bed, beside her is Jeff, he made his way to them. He sees that her face is as pale as a ghost, and she is trembling in cold because the fever, the girl looked a lot smaller without that polite, cold mask. He was aware that her wounds are infected, but was surprised when he found out that the sheets were covered in blood, his eyes tracing the red lines and found several deep cuts, and bruises were everywhere on her body.

"What happened?"He questioned, "What happened?" Jeff answered, clearly disgusted."Several men attacked her for disrespect them, she fought back, so they decided to teach her a lesson, I heard the screams and arrived in time. You should have see that, uncle, two men were holding her with one men was cutting her with his sword. I can swear that if I had not arrived in time, they will not hesitant to take some --"

"Will she live?"Jamie cuts off.

"Hard to tell, I have done all I can, now only the gods can help her."Comes the reply.

Jamie looked at the wounds again, he felt anger roses."You may leave, nephew, and would yoube so kind to see that everyone that has a hand in hurting Lady Lyria were in chains. I shall stay with her."

Jeff nodded and took his leave. Jamie took the seat beside the girl, soon the night began to fell, and the girl began to murmur in her dream. "It's so cold."She complained, but her eyes were still shut."Where's-- No please don't hurt him, please!"Her screams filled in the tent, ringing in the dark.

"No one is there, little wolf."He said calmly, but she seemed did not heard him and kept screaming, he could see her became even paler, cold sweat dropped from her forehead. "Little wolf? Lyria?"He tried again, by this time she finally wake up,

"Ser Jamie?"She asked. Uncertain of what had happened."What happened? What --"

"I offer my apologizes, little wolf, for what my men did to you, you don't deserve to be treat like that, nobody did."It's stupid, he never apologize to anyone, especially not a Stark, but here he is, he started to think whether she is a witch that had tricked him. But the young girl has nothing in her eyes but weary and pain, "I accept your apology, ser."She finally managed to say the words, before moaning softly in pain again.

Noticing that she is in pain, he gently laid a hand on his squire's shoulder. "Go get some rest, I will make sure no harm will come to you."She eyed him suspiciously, but soon obeyed, he watched her until her eyes were closed and her breathing has become soft, then he returned his spot and spend the night in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some tags:  
> Jeff Lannister(original character)--17, second son of Solion Lannister(also one of my original characters).  
> Lyria Stark--14  
> Robb Stark--15  
> Sansa Stark--12  
> Arya Stark--10  
> Brandon Stark--8  
> Rickon Stark--4
> 
> There will be more original characters, get ready!


	19. The red comet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A red comet appears, dragons returns, Dany dreamt of someone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy! The next POV will be a suprise.

Daenerys

 

Jhogo spied it first. “There,” he said in a hushed voice. Dany looked and saw it, low in the east.

The first star was a comet, burning red. Bloodred; fire red; the dragon’s tail. She could not have asked for a stronger sign.

Dany took the torch from Aggo’s hand and thrust it between the logs. The oil took the fire at once,the brush and dried grass a heartbeat later. Tiny flames went darting up the wood like swift red mice,skating over the oil and leaping from bark to branch to leaf. A rising heat puffed at her face, soft and sudden as a lover’s breath, but in seconds it had grown too hot to bear. Dany stepped backward.

The wood crackled, louder and louder. Mirri Maz Duur began to sing in a shrill, ululating voice. The flames whirled and writhed, racing each other up the platform. The dusk shimmered as the air itselfseemed to liquefy from the heat. Dany heard logs spit and crack. The fires swept over Mirri MazDuur. Her song grew louder, shriller … then she gasped, again and again, and her song became a shuddering wail, thin and high and full of agony.

And now the flames reached her Drogo, and now they were all around him. His clothing took fire,and for an instant the khal was clad in wisps of floating orange silk and tendrils of curling smoke,grey and greasy. Dany’s lips parted and she found herself holding her breath. Part of her wanted to go to him as Ser Jorah had feared, to rush into the flames to beg for his forgiveness and take him inside her one last time, the fire melting the flesh from their bones until they were as one, forever.

She could smell the odor of burning flesh, no different than horseflesh roasting in a firepit. The pyre roared in the deepening dusk like some great beast, drowning out the fainter sound of Mirri MazDuur’s screaming and sending up long tongues of flame to lick at the belly of the night. As the smoke grew thicker, the Dothraki backed away, coughing. Huge orange gouts of fire unfurled their bannersin that hellish wind, the logs hissing and cracking, glowing cinders rising on the smoke to float away into the dark like so many newborn fireflies. The heat beat at the air with great red wings, driving the Dothraki back, driving off even Mormont, but Dany stood her ground. She was the blood of the dragon, and the fire was in her.

She had sensed the truth of it long ago, Dany thought as she took a step closer to the conflagration,but the brazier had not been hot enough. The flames writhed before her like the women who had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their yellow and orange and crimson veils,fearsome to behold, yet lovely, so lovely, alive with heat. Dany opened her arms to them, her skin flushed and glowing. This is a wedding, too, she thought. Mirri Maz Duur had fallen silent. The godswife thought her a child, but children grow, and children learn.

Another step, and Dany could feel the heat of the sand on the soles of her feet, even through her sandals. Sweat ran down her thighs and between her breasts and in rivulets over her cheeks, where tears had once run. Ser Jorah was shouting behind her, but he did not matter anymore, only the fire mattered. The flames were so beautiful, the loveliest things she had ever seen, each one a sorcerer robed in yellow and orange and scarlet, swirling long smoky cloaks. She saw crimson firelions andgreat yellow serpents and unicorns made of pale blue flame; she saw fish and foxes and monsters,wolves and bright birds and flowering trees, each more beautiful than the last. She saw a horse, agreat grey stallion limned in smoke, its flowing mane a nimbus of blue flame. Yes, my love, my sun and-stars, yes, mount now, ride now.

Her vest had begun to smolder, so Dany shrugged it off and let it fall to the ground. The painted leather burst into sudden flame as she skipped closer to the fire, her breasts bare to the blaze, streams of milk flowing from her red and swollen nipples. Now, she thought, now, and for an instant she glimpsed Khal Drogo before her, mounted on his smoky stallion, a flaming lash in his hand. He smiled, and the whip snaked down at the pyre, hissing.

She heard a crack, the sound of shattering stone. The platform of wood and brush and grass began to shift and collapse in upon itself. Bits of burning wood slid down at her, and Dany was showeredwith ash and cinders. And something else came crashing down, bouncing and rolling, to land at her feet; a chunk of curved rock, pale and veined with gold, broken and smoking. The roaring filled the world, yet dimly through the firefall Dany heard women shriek and children cry out in wonder.

Only death can pay for life.

And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder, and the smoke stirred and whirledaround her and the pyre shifted, the logs exploding as the fire touched their secret hearts. She heardthe screams of frightened horses, and the voices of the Dothraki raised in shouts of fear and terror,and Ser Jorah calling her name and cursing. No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons,mother of dragons, don’t you see? Don’t you SEE? With a belch of flame and smoke that reachedthirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and came down around her. Unafraid, Dany steppedforward into the firestorm, calling to her children.

The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the world.

Dany sat in the pyre, the fire danced around her, she looked at them at smiled.

she used to be a little girl, later she turned into a dragon, a real dragon, she then thought of her dream after her child die...

She thought of Viserys, her late brother. But it's not Viserys she want to think, it's the boy, the boy with darker skin than them, but still the same purple eyes and the same silver hair. He was accompanied by an elderly Knight, who seemed at the same age as Ser Jorah. She heard him said to her:"One day, we will take back the throne, I will take back what is rightfully ours, dear aunt, Fire and Blood."

When the fire died at last and the ground became cool enough to walk upon, Ser Jorah Mormont found her amidst the ashes, surrounded by blackened logs and bits of glowing ember and the burntbones of man and woman and stallion. She was naked, covered with soot, her clothes turned to ash,her beautiful hair all crisped away … yet she was unhurt.

The cream-and-gold dragon was suckling at her left breast, the green-and-bronze at the right. Her arms cradled them close. The black-and-scarlet beast was draped across her shoulders, its long sinuous neck coiled under her chin. When it saw Jorah, it raised its head and looked at him with eyes as red as coals.

Wordless, the knight fell to his knees. The men of her khas came up behind him. Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. “Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo echo. “Blood of my blood,” Rakharo shouted.

And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the Dothraki, men and women and children, and Dany had only to look at their eyes to know that they were hers now, today and tomorrow and forever, hers as they had never been Drogo’s.

As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.


	20. The first step

Aegon

Prince Aegon Targaryen, sixth of his name, rode on The road to enter the great city of Meeren.The plan was to sneak in the room when all the great Masters were assembled and pretend to be a servant, while dragging all the Masters' wine.

Ser Authur Dayne, his mentor and protector, was clearly unhappy about the dishonorable plot, but he also admitted that it is the best way to get them an army of Unsullied, which is an crucial step in their attempt to take back the Iron Throne.

When Aegon was six, Robert's Rebellion starts, knowing that King's Landing is not safe anymore, his father, Rhaegar, took him to the Tower of Joy where he met Lyanna stark and his unborn brother, Jaehaerys. Aegon stayed there when Rhaegar goes to war. Then he never come back, he thought bitterly, He promised he will, but his father never get to fulfill that promise. And when Eddard Stark come to get his sister, Ser Arthur took him across the Narrow Sea where they disguise as merchants. 

From that time,a plan to retake Westeroes has formed. This night is the first step of the many.

They had slipped into the house, Ser Arthur had a friend who promised to poison the guards. So they easily get in the chamber. The lord had been assembled, as they planned, Aegon pretend to slip and put the drug into the pot, while later they hid to see whether the plan worked.

The Masters suddenly began to jerk and cough, then blood began to flow out from their noses, mouths, their eyes were dark red and their face were purple, then they all began to dropdead on the table, one by one.

Aegon walked out of the hiding place, he looked at he horn used to control the Unsullied. Then walked out the room. The guards had already seen the Masters' death, anda small crowd had assembled outside.

Aegon took a breath and step forward."I have killed the Slave Masters, you are all free now. I have taken control over the Unsullied, but I promise they will not harm you."  
The men and women began chatting and cheering, and some shout to him. Beside him, Ser Arthur reached for his sword, but Aegon stopped him. "These are my people,"He said, "They will not harm me."

"Unsullied, kill everyone who still work for the Slave Masters, but don't hurt them if they surrender."He commands.

When they march into the city, Aegon smiled. This is indeed the first step of all.


	21. The death

Eddard

 

Eddard hurried to the King's chamber, nearly bump into Lord Renly in the process. The men looked at him and said softly, "You need to hurry, the King... is waiting."

"How's him? What happened?"

"The King drank too much during the hunt, and a boar hurt him. "Renly answered.

Dammit Robert, you should knew drinking and hunting should not happen at the same time, Jon taught you better than that. But still he thanks the youngest Baratheon, before hurrying to the King's chambers.

His cupbearer... Something suddenly occurred to him. The King's squire is Lancel Lannister, Cersei's cousin, does she had something to do with it? His thoughts drift back to their talk days ago.

She came to him at sunset, as the clouds reddened above the walls and towers. She came alone, as he had bid her. For once she was dressed simply, in leather boots and hunting greens. When she drew back the hood of her brown cloak, he saw the bruise where the king had struck her. The angry plum color had faded to yellow, and the swelling was down, but there was no mistaking it for anything but what it was.

“Why here?” Cersei Lannister asked as she stood over him.

“So the gods can see.”

She sat beside him on the grass. Her every move was graceful. Her curling blond hair moved in the wind, and her eyes were green as the leaves of summer. It had been a long time since Ned Stark had seen her beauty, but he saw it now. “I know the truth Jon Arryn died for,” he told her.

“Do you?” The queen watched his face, wary as a cat. “Is that why you called me here, Lord Stark? To pose me riddles? Or is it your intent to seize me, as your wife seized my brother?”

“If you truly believed that, you would never have come.” Ned touched her cheek gently. “Has he done this before?”

“Once or twice.” She shied away from his hand. “Never on the face before. Jaime would have killed him, even if it meant his own life.” Cersei looked at him defiantly. “My brother is worth a hundred of your friend.”

“Your brother?” Ned said. “Or your lover?”

“Both.” She did not flinch from the truth. “Since we were children together. And why not? The Targaryens wed brother to sister for three hundred years, to keep the bloodlines pure. And Jaime and I are more than brother and sister. We are one person in two bodies. We shared a womb together. He came into this world holding my foot, our old maester said. When he is in me, I feel … whole.” The ghost of a smile flitted over her lips.

“My son Bran …”

To her credit, Cersei did not look away. “He saw us. You love your children, do you not?”

Robert had asked him the very same question, the morning of the melee. He gave her the same answer. “With all my heart.”

“No less do I love mine.”

Ned thought, If it came to that, the life of some child I did not know, against Robb and Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon, what would I do? Even more so, what would Catelyn do, if it were Jon’s life, against the children of her body? He did not know. He prayed he never would.

“All three are Jaime’s,” he said. It was not a question.

“Thank the gods.”

The seed is strong, Jon Arryn had cried on his deathbed, and so it was. All those bastards, all with hair as black as night. Grand Maester Malleon recorded the last mating between stag and lion, someninety years ago, when Tya Lannister wed Gowen Baratheon, third son of the reigning lord. Their only issue, an unnamed boy described in Malleon’s tome as a large and lusty lad born with a fullhead of black hair, died in infancy. Thirty years before that a male Lannister had taken a Baratheon maid to wife. She had given him three daughters and a son, each black-haired. No matter how farback Ned searched in the brittle yellowed pages, always he found the gold yielding before the coal.

“A dozen years,” Ned said. “How is it that you have had no children by the king?”

She lifted her head, defiant. “Your Robert got me with child once,” she said, her voice thick with contempt. “My brother found a woman to cleanse me. He never knew. If truth be told, I can scarcelybear for him to touch me, and I have not let him inside me for years. I know other ways to pleasure him, when he leaves his whores long enough to stagger up to my bedchamber. Whatever we do, the king is usually so drunk that he’s forgotten it all by the next morning.”

How could they have all been so blind? The truth was there in front of them all the time, written on the children’s faces. Ned felt sick. “I remember Robert as he was the day he took the throne, everyinch a king,” he said quietly. “A thousand other women might have loved him with all their hearts.

What did he do to make you hate him so?”

Her eyes burned, green fire in the dusk, like the lioness that was her sigil. “The night of our wedding feast, the first time we shared a bed, he called me by your sister’s name. He was on top of me, in me, stinking of wine, and he whispered Lyanna.”

Ned Stark thought of pale blue roses, and for a moment he wanted to weep. “I do not know which of you I pity most.”

The queen seemed amused by that. “Save your pity for yourself, Lord Stark. I want none of it.”

“You know what I must do.”

“Must!” She put her hand on his good leg, just above the knee. “A true man does what he will, not what he must.” Her fingers brushed lightly against his thigh, the gentlest of promises. “The realm needs a strong Hand. Joff will not come of age for years. No one wants war again, least of all me.”

Her hand touched his face, his hair. “If friends can turn to enemies, enemies can become friends. Your wife is a thousand leagues away, and my brother has fled. Be kind to me, Ned. I swear to you, you shall never regret it.”

“Did you make the same offer to Jon Arryn?”

She slapped him.

“I shall wear that as a badge of honor,” Ned said dryly.

“Honor,” she spat. “How dare you play the noble lord with me! What do you take me for?

You’ve a bastard of your own, I’ve seen him. Who was the mother, I wonder? Some Dornish peasant you raped while her holdfast burned? A whore? Or was it the grieving sister, the Lady Ashara? She threw herself into the sea, I’m told. Why was that? For the brother you slew, or the child you stole?

Tell me, my honorable Lord Eddard, how are you any different from Robert, or me, or Jaime?”

“For a start,” said Ned, “I do not kill children. You would do well to listen, my lady. I shall say this only once. When the king returns from his hunt, I intend to lay the truth before him. You must be gone by then. You and your children, all three, and not to Casterly Rock. If I were you, I should take ship for the Free Cities, or even farther, to the Summer Isles or the Port of Ibben. As far as the winds blow.”

“Exile,” she said. “A bitter cup to drink from.”

“A sweeter cup than your father served Rhaegar’s children,” Ned said, “and kinder than you deserve. Your father and your brothers would do well to go with you. Lord Tywin’s gold will buy you comfort and hire swords to keep you safe. You shall need them. I promise you, no matter where you flee, Robert’s wrath will follow you, to the back of beyond if need be.”

The queen stood. “And what of my wrath, Lord Stark?” she asked softly. Her eyes searched his face. “You should have taken the realm for yourself. It was there for the taking. Jaime told me how you found him on the Iron Throne the day King’s Landing fell, and made him yield it up. That was your moment. All you needed to do was climb those steps, and sit. Such a sad mistake.”

Then she left, leaving him to his thoughts.

As he approached, Ned shook his head to chase away his thoughts. Two Kingsguards stood beside the door, both paler than usual. The royal steward announced his arrival."Lord Stark has arrived, your grace."

"Let him in."He heard Robert commanded inside.

The King is laying on his bed, a blanket covered his chest, as Ned guessed where the wound would be. The royal children and The Queen were standing beside, Prince Tommen and Princess Mycella were crying, even Joffrey seemed sad and put his hand on his sister's shoulder. Robert looked up as he approached.

"I wish to speak to him, alone."

"Your grace."The steward bowed as he escorted the children outside.

“Ned,” the king whispered when he saw him. His face was pale as milk. “Come … closer.”

His men brought him close. Ned steadied himself with a hand on the bedpost. He had only to look down at Robert to know how bad it was. “What …?” he began, his throat clenched.

“A devil,” the king husked. “My own fault. Too much wine, damn me to hell. Missed my thrust.”

Eddard Stark lifted the blanket.

They had done what they could to close him up, but it was nowhere near enough. The boar must have been a fearsome thing. It had ripped the king from groin to nipple with its tusks. The wine-soaked bandages that Grand Maester Pycelle had applied were already black with blood, and the smell off the wound was hideous. Ned’s stomach turned. He let the blanket fall.

“Stinks,” Robert said. “The stink of death, don’t think I can’t smell it. Bastard did me good, eh?

But I … I paid him back in kind, Ned.” The king’s smile was as terrible as his wound, his teeth red.

“Drove a knife right through his eye. Ask them if I didn’t. Ask them.”

Robert whispered. “Now leave us. The lot of you. I need to speak with Ned.”

“Robert, my sweet lord …” Cersei began.

“I said leave,” Robert insisted with a hint of his old fierceness. “What part of that don’t you understand, woman?”

Cersei gathered up her skirts and her dignity and led the way to the door. The others followed. Grand Maester Pycelle lingered, his hands shaking as he offered the king a cup of thickwhite liquid. “The milk of the poppy, Your Grace,” he said. “Drink. For your pain.”

Robert knocked the cup away with the back of his hand. “Away with you. I’ll sleep soon enough,old fool. Get out.”

Grand Maester Pycelle gave Ned a stricken look as he shuffled from the room.

“Damn you, Robert,” Ned said when they were alone. His leg was throbbing so badly he was almost blind with pain. Or perhaps it was grief that fogged his eyes. He lowered himself to the bed,beside his friend. “Why do you always have to be so headstrong?”

“Ah, fuck you, Ned,” the king said hoarsely. “I killed the bastard, didn’t I?” A lock of matted black hair fell across his eyes as he glared up at Ned. “Ought to do the same for you. Can’t leave a man to hunt in peace. Ser Robar found me. Gregor’s head. Ugly thought. Never told the Hound. Let Cersei surprise him.” His laugh turned into a grunt as a spasm of pain hit him. “Gods have mercy,” he muttered, swallowing his agony. “The girl. Daenerys. Only a child, you were right … that’s why, the girl … the gods sent the boar … sent to punish me …” The king coughed, bringing up blood. “Wrong,it was wrong, I … only a girl … Varys, Littlefinger, even my brother … worthless … no one to tell me no but you, Ned … only you …” He lifted his hand, the gesture pained and feeble. “Paper and ink. There, on the table. Write what I tell you.”

Ned smoothed the paper out across his knee and took up the quill. “At your command, Your Grace.”

“This is the will and word of Robert of House Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the Andals and all the rest—put in the damn titles, you know how it goes. I do hereby command Eddard of House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Hand of the King, to serve as Lord Regent and Protector of the Realm upon my … upon my death … to rule in my … in my stead, until my son Joffrey does come of age …”

“Robert …” Joffrey is not your son, he wanted to say, but the words would not come. The agony was written too plainly across Robert’s face; he could not hurt him more. So Ned bent his head and wrote, but where the king had said “my son Joffrey,” he scrawled “my heir” instead. The deceit made him feel soiled. The lies we tell for love, he thought. May the gods forgive me. “What else would you have me say?”

“Say … whatever you need to. Protect and defend, gods old and new, you have the words. Write.

I’ll sign it. You give it to the council when I’m dead.”

“Robert,” Ned said in a voice thick with grief, “you must not do this. Don’t die on me. The realm needs you.”

Robert took his hand, fingers squeezing hard. “You are … such a bad liar, Ned Stark,” he said through his pain. “The realm … the realm knows … what a wretched king I’ve been. Bad as Aerys,the gods spare me.”

“No,” Ned told his dying friend, “not so bad as Aerys, Your Grace. Not near so bad as Aerys.”

Robert managed a weak red smile. “At the least, they will say … this last thing … this I did right.

You won’t fail me. You’ll rule now. You’ll hate it, worse than I did … but you’ll do well. Are you done with the scribbling?”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Ned offered Robert the paper. The king scrawled his signature blindly,leaving a smear of blood across the letter. “The seal should be witnessed.”

“Serve the boar at my funeral feast,” Robert rasped. “Apple in its mouth, skin seared crisp. Eat the bastard. Don’t care if you choke on him. Promise me, Ned.”

“I promise.” Promise me, Ned, Lyanna’s voice echoed.

“The girl,” the king said. “Daenerys. Let her live. If you can, if it … not too late … talk to them … Varys, Littlefinger … don’t let them kill her. And help my son, Ned. Make him be … better than me.” He winced. “Gods have mercy.”

“They will, my friend,” Ned said. “They will.”

The king closed his eyes and seemed to relax. “Killed by a pig,” he muttered. “Ought to laugh, but it hurts too much.”

Ned was not laughing. “Shall I call them back?”

Robert gave a weak nod. “As you will. Gods, why is it so cold in here?”

The servants rushed back in and hurried to feed the fires. The queen had gone; that was some small relief, at least. If she had any sense, Cersei would take her children and fly before the break of day,Ned thought. She had lingered too long already.

King Robert did not seem to miss her. He bid The Grand Maester Pycelle to stand in witness as he pressed his seal into the hot yellow wax that Ned had dripped upon his letter. “Now give me something for the pain and let me die.”

Hurriedly Grand Maester Pycelle mixed him another draught of the milk of the poppy. This time the king drank deeply. His black beard was beaded with thick white droplets when he threw the empty cup aside. “Will I dream?”

Ned gave him his answer. “You will, my lord.”

“Good,” he said, smiling. “I will give Lyanna your love, Ned. Take care of my children for me.”

The words twisted in Ned’s belly like a knife. For a moment he was at a loss. He could not bring himself to lie. Then he remembered the bastards: little Barra at her mother’s breast, Mya in the Vale,Gendry at his forge, and all the others. “I shall … guard your children as if they were my own,” he said slowly.

Robert nodded and closed his eyes. Ned watched his old friend sag softly into the pillows as the milk of the poppy washed the pain from his face. Sleep took him.

Eddard stood up. Now I shall deal with you, Cersei, let's hope you still have some sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, kudos and feedbacks are welcome!


	22. Author's Notes

I Am Sooo Sorry！  
So first of all, I will apologize for not updating, and I will not abandon this fic. I have just finished my final exams, so it's vacation now and the updating will surely be more frequent. The next chapter will be out at Wednesday or Thurs.  
Till The Next Chapter:)


	23. Dark Wings, Dark News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddard's letter to Robb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> truly sorry for keeping you waiting! Well the promised chapter's here, and the next will be Lyria, probably out at the weekends or so.

Robb

 

It has been days since Catelyn Stark left.

Robb paced in his chambers, several howls came from the outer yards, he knew that it was the wolves, probably with Rickon, but he had no time to think about that.

"My lord. A Raven from King's Landing..."Master Luwin said weakly.

Dark Wings, Dark Words. Robb suddenly thought of this old line which Old Nan had told him about, it must be grim news. He took a deep breath, and broke the sign.

Dear Robb, 

The situation in King's Landing is getting worse. King Robert is dead because of a boar during one hunt, the coronation of King Joffrey will soon take place. And because Lord Tyrion is taken, Ser Jamie took Lyria but I doubt think he will dare do anything to her, within his father's eyes, at least. However, the Queen insisted that Lyria is a ward to their house and Ser Jamie can take here to Casterly Rock anytime he wants, and after Robert's death, I don't think any further protests will influence the consequence. And here's my warning: Do not raise arms easily, especially don't do it now, I have a plan about it, and I need you to make sure that Winterfell can hold until I came back.

I know this is a bit hard for you, son, but I will be back soon, I promise. 

Signed,  
Lord Eddard Stark,  
Hand of the King

Robb stared blankly at the letter, before suddenly all the information was clear in his head. He crushed the letter with his hand, slammed it on his table, making the items on it temble, and threw it into the fire.

"My lord?"

"He took Lyria!"This was all he could say, his sister, his little sister, was now in the Kingslayer's dirty hands, mocked and beaten, he could even saw the cruel smirk on the Lannister's face as he watched his sister cry, calling her names... Gods he wanted to crash his pretty face with his own fist: how dare he touch his sister!

"Forgive me my lord, but I must point out that Lord Eddard had directly command you that you must not raise banners or do anything rush, he is taking care of this, and you must act accordingly and -- "

"Out."

The old maester obeyed at once, closing the door. Robb slammed the table, this time making all the things crush to the ground, along with he himself. He slam his fist to the ground again and again, until the blood dripped out and he slowly drift to sleep.


End file.
